Bob Bromley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m just wondering if there are recognition programs that the government supports. Most communities know who their really successful social workers are, and a mechanism to support social workers would be great through some recognition or awards like that. Do we have that sort of support in place? Mahsi.

The opportunity to promote development of a made-in-the-North university with a curriculum tailor-made for northern students is not to be missed. In the words of founder Dr. Erin Freeland-Ballantyne, “we need to build a new generation of leaders and researchers who can walk confidently in both worlds and be change-makers.” The pilot has clearly demonstrated how. Now let’s put the financial and legislation support in place to put this unique model to work across the NWT.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome to the Premier and his witnesses here on this occasion. Just looking at this bill and the work that’s been done, I have to congratulate all involved. I know it’s been a tremendous amount of work and today is an exciting day indeed.

I see an elders’ council. I see a justice council. I see a beneficiary’s board. I see the main council. These elements tell me that there’s been a lot of focus brought to these negotiations that the people are there to serve their people here, and there’s been a lot of excellent consideration gone into this.

I see an annual report at a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Dechinta, with leading indigenous professors co-teaching with northern leaders, is celebrating the fifth anniversary of a pilot project to test delivery of original northern university courses designed and developed in the North. It’s been a resounding success for the only land-based and independent university-accredited education provider in the Northwest Territories. It is now time to transition to an operational program in all regions.

The unique Dechinta model has no infrastructure expense. It is designed to be land-based and to use and support already built private...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize my constituent from Ndilo, Brent Betsina, also winner of the national level silver medal from the Canada Games.

---Applause

More on that a little bit later. Welcome, Brent. Also, of course, my constituency assistant, Bob Wilson, resident of Weledeh. Of course, I’d like to join you, Mr. Speaker, in welcoming Ronnie Campbell to the House. It’s been a pleasure working with him, and I also wish him all the best in retirement. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Because of waste grain in the South, snow geese are overpopulating Banks Island and destroying wildlife habitat. Egg harvest can contribute to their control while addressing nutritional deficiencies and cost of living for NWT residents facing food insecurity.

More than two decades ago, Canada and the U.S. amended the Migratory Bird Convention to allow for the spring harvest of migratory birds to aid in management such as addressing the overpopulation of snow geese. But despite American states and some eastern Canadian provinces instituting spring sport hunts to...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. Just a little bit of follow-up and then one more area. First of all, I want to correct the Minister. I didn’t say it was a failure across all regions; I said it was a failure in my region specifically in Yellowknife. If the Minister had been with us on our tour of Aurora College Yellowknife Campus, I probably wouldn’t have seen him because we had to squeeze single file through the areas, and if anybody stood up from a desk, that stopped our procession and you would have been out of sight. This has been a known situation for a long time now. Talk about sardines in a tin can...

Thanks to the Minister for that response. I appreciate, I guess, that I now know I am dealing with this in a timely way, given that this will be discussed in the next few months. So, I guess I would ask the Minister, is he prepared to push for school projects to finally be addressed in Yellowknife and including Aurora College to try and get them on the capital as soon as possible as a priority of this department?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few questions here. I see the department or this activity includes the overall development, design and planning of capital infrastructure projects. As we know, there’s been a real paucity of infrastructure for the Department of Education over the last three years in the order of 2 or 3 percent of the infrastructure budget. I’m wondering, given the many requests the Minister has heard, at least for the region I’m in, can we expect that there will be significant proposals coming forward to address some of the infrastructure deficiencies we see in, for example, some...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, again, appreciate the Minister’s return there. I just mentioned that I focused on eggs today. The same thing could be true for the birds themselves which are a well-known source of nutritious food, and so I just ask the Minister that he include the possibility of harvesting the birds. The Sachs Harbour hunters have had a lot of experience with them and are fully capable of answering this need if directed and provided with the support. I’ll leave it at that.