Thank you to all of you for your presentations. I'm the member of Parliament for Northwest Territories.
Since the study was undertaken, we've experienced quite a few suicides. In under five months, we've had four. When you start adding the people who are passing from drug overdoses, because drugs have hit the north too and are in the small communities, we're really seeing the impact on our communities. I find it really interesting when you say 25 people per suicide death are impacted, and maybe that number is even a little low. I know in our communities that people are all pretty much connected. People are related, and when somebody passes away, it's significant and it takes a long time to recover. Some people never recover.
We have had a chance to study this issue for a while now. We've gone to several communities and a lot of the facts that you've raised here today we've heard in most places.
I represent 33 communities and in some of our smaller communities, especially the ones that are made up of larger aboriginal populations or predominately aboriginal, we have real issues with trusting and using the health centres or the RCMP. We have limited capacity and we have very few programs that address some of the issues that need to be dealt with as a result of the residential schools or trauma or how they've been impacted. We virtually have no infrastructure to house programs or offices.
We heard in some of our testimony, mostly by the youth, that there should be a recommendation that investment be made in community-based youth facilities to be used for recreation, for reconciliation, for healing, for hunting, and for sports. We do have some facilities such as friendship centres or cultural centres, but I haven't heard anybody speak to actual infrastructure, so I'd like to ask that question.
We also heard lots about the issue of housing and how that's impacting people in the communities and causing a feeling of despair, because there's no place to stay. There's no place for people who are homeless. It's a growing issue.
Maybe I could ask the two organizations to touch on those two areas.