Everyone in Nunavut should lobby for better health care

Iqaluit is my home and I am proud of it. I would like to commend city council for going ahead with the ban of smoking in the public places.

I would also like to say thank you to Dr. Anna Banerji, who is working to better children’s lives in the Baffin area — I hope it works so it can be used to study the other two regions in Nunavut. Keep up the great work, Anna, and I also would like to thank those kids participating in this very important respiratory project. Thank you for thinking about your health.

It would be nice for all the community members who deal with health and social issues to lobby the Nunavut government’s health and social services department, as well as the Nunavut Housing Corporation, to show the need for more funds from the federal government and that the people of the North really do need the funds to get healthy and to stay healthy.

It would also be nice to hear from community members, whether they be from Iqaluit or Pangnirtung, Arviat, Cape Dorset or Igloolik, for that matter all the communities of Nunavut, to tell Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.’s health and social department that the federal government should listen to the Inuit when we tell them that we need more funds to carry out proper, adequate and up to standard health services.

Ed Picco, you are doing good, but you can do better with the power of all the Inuit and the public in Nunavut. Cathy Towtongie, if you can do a public press release on the true health and housing status of the Inuit of Nunavut, maybe then the federal government would listen to you. All of you, federal, territorial and Inuit organizations, should work together for the betterment of the Inuit in the settlement area.

In closing, I would like to thank all those people who think about the Inuit in the southern urban settings, northern people helping us in keeping some part of our tradition alive by sending us traditional food, we appreciate traditional food at any time of the year. A great big thank you.

Name withheld by request
Ottawa