Mr. Speaker, as this term goes on, the list of challenges facing the territory keeps getting longer. It's so tempting to keep piling more and more demands on our public servants. Save our economy, decent housing for all, get crime under control, health care, addictions, graduation rates, build roads to every community and mine. Just a few simple asks. Oh, and solve everything faster because we only have a year and a half left. And cheaper because our debt's out of control.
Amidst this overwhelm, I am going to risk sounding like a lunatic or hopelessly naive because I want to first talk about literacy. Literacy. Come on, we're a modern society, everyone's literate. Except for maybe a few folks with disabilities, right?
Well, a study from 2003 found that almost half of our youth aged 16 to 25 could not read or write well enough to fully participate in society. Almost half. 70 percent of Indigenous adults and 30 percent of non-Indigenous adults were found to not be functionally literate. Struggles with math skills were even worse. Since then, we stopped even trying to measure literacy rates amongst either students or adults.
So picture a child who is struggling to read in the early grades. Maybe other students are picking it up naturally, but this child is not. So they get the idea early on there's something wrong with them. As they get older, school keeps getting harder. Maybe they skip school or act out and they get labelled as a troublemaker. After grade 9, they either just drop out entirely or get really good at faking it and manage to slip through without the basic skills to enter further training or schooling.
There's so much shame and embarrassment around illiteracy, people are good at hiding. So they're going to avoid trying for a driver's license or trying that trades entrance exam, avoid filling out applications, avoid applying for jobs. They're stuck, bored. They're likely to turn to crime, addictions. Their housing will be at risk. Even if they decide to go to a treatment program for addictions, they're likely to drop out because it involves reading and writing.
What if we tried to find out how many of our unemployed youth and adults are functionally illiterate? How many of those in our criminal justice system? How many of those needing addictions treatment? Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
Thank you, Mr. Speaker and to my colleagues. Mr. Speaker, we have got overwhelming problems, and we've got to find threads we can pull on that can lead to transformational change. I believe literacy is a key thread that we've been ignoring and plan to speak more about it this session. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Yellowknife North. Members' statements. Member from Frame Lake.
