Herbert Nakimayak

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize Mr. Pascal Erasmus. Yesterday, I mentioned that he worked for myself and Mr. Beaulieu, the representative of the riding of Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh. Mr. Speaker, I am going go on this again: when you have someone working for two different ridings, it really broadens their horizons. I see that in Pascal. I appreciate the work that he has done. He has written some good statements over the past couple of weeks.

Also, all the staff, there are many all over who have responded to some emails and some really pressing issues that affect constituents' social...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize a couple of special people. I think that I have a couple of grandchildren in the gallery, Scarlett and Tucker are both young babies, and also Alyssa. Alyssa, actually, is doing amazing things. She is working with organizations like the Edmonton Eskimos. There is so much debate about whether we are Inuit or Eskimo and what that means to us. Alyssa is actually helping with that in what she does to educate people and educate people properly. There are so many misconceptions of the word, and even through this government. There is so much good work...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to just start off by looking back on the last four years. We have learned a lot. We have learned a lot as Regular MLAs working with Cabinet. It is not an us-versus-them system. It is consensus government.

Mr. Speaker, this past week, when we passed all of these bills, it showed how consensus government works. I am proud of that, actually. Coming from a small community, it really did voice my concerns from my region coming from the most expensive region in the territory, maybe in Canada, maybe in this world. When you think about it, the cost of living in the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize Mr. Pascal Erasmus. He works with myself and Tom, and it is good to see young people like that working for MLAs who live in different regions of the territory. It really helps grow our capacity within an individual. I would like to thank Pascal for his help over the last couple of weeks, especially during the final bit of session, and also to Mr. Rylund Johnson, as well. I see that he is running in the next territorial election. I wish him luck. We have had a lot of aspiring politicians sit over the last couple of weeks, and it is good to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to talk about the long-awaited Arctic Policy Framework that the federal government has been working on for the last two-and-a-half years and should be unveiling any time now.

Mr. Speaker, it has been 10 years since the federal government released its first Arctic Policy Framework, so Canada is long overdue for an updated set of policy directives regarding our Arctic region. I think it is worth noting that among the many differences between our pending framework and last decade's framework is the fact that, this time around, our federal government seems...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Adding preambles into every bill, I don't know if that is the right thing to do. Some of them involve many different countries, and sometimes, it is useful. In this case, there are a lot of different Indigenous groups that have differences. I don't know if they would want to see this, myself, coming from one. Just for the record, Mr. Chair, I come from the Inuvialuit settlement region. A lot of these motions are made not from Indigenous recommendation or interactions. I think they mostly come out of the capital. I see this, and I am worried about this.

I would like to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, worry about this, as well. I, as well, too, like Mr. McNeely, sat in intergovernmental council meetings between the Inuvialuit and Cabinet. I see the working relationship. I see there are examples out there that we see here as a government that have come through this House, funding and implementation of programs and services. I wonder about this. I wonder where this is coming from. That is my question, Mr. Chair. Seeing it in action, I don't know about this. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize Mr. Alphonse Nitsiza. Mr. Speaker, Alphonse is one person who works for Indigenous government. I mention that a lot, and coming from that background, I have a lot of respect and I look up to Alphonse and all of the hard work he has done for the Tlicho region, especially for the outlying and remote communities. I would like to welcome Alphonse and, once again, thank him for all of his hard work. I look up to that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know what, I am looking at this, and I had to look again. Mr. Chair, we have very capable research staff who are assigned to committees and do very good work. This, I think, almost takes away from them. You know, all of the educational stuff, I don't know what we are going to do. Like, say, the next government or the next committee, I don't know how we put educational stuff out there, but the next committee would have to decide that, and the next government. You know, all of this plain language stuff, we do get from our research, and it's very good. It's very high...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and also, thanks to committee for the work on this report. Mr. Chair, I look at all of these bills that we have been working on recently. I look at this, and it says "devolution" across it, and sometimes we see a draft, and I think, coming from Inuvialuit Settlement Region, our working relationship is never perfect, but nothing ever is. There are differences between Indigenous governments, points of view, even though they sit at borders, look at the languages. Those are different. When you have those little bit of differences within Indigenous peoples or even with the...