The Minister speaks to a territorial commission with regional representation from the Northwest Territories. I’d like to ask, if once this commission is in place, if there will be specific requirements that members are appointed or if it’s pretty well someone from the region that’s very passionate about this work and want to see this type of legal aid service in our communities emphasize in regards to the types of service now we are seeing from the legal aid services when they come to our communities for specific court issues. There are too many complaints from our region about the legal aid...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank the honourable Member for Nahendeh for bringing this motion to the floor and having some discussion on it this afternoon. I have also been contacted by some people in the Sahtu region. I didn’t quite understand the issue until I looked into it further.

Regarding the rent scale, I applaud the Minister. We have worked through the issue of how to reduce the cost of living in our smaller communities up in the Sahtu, of Fort Good Hope, Deline, Norman Wells and Tulita. Further north the cost of living is very high. Actually, I was up in Ulukhaktok. I couldn’t...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to table a letter to Prime Minister Harper regarding the Financial Investment Protection Act, “First Nations lands and treaty territories cannot be sold out to foreign investors.”

I look forward to the Minister’s end results of that discussion. I guess I’m going to ask what type of commitment he can make here in the House that he will get back to me and other Members who also have trappers in their regions that could possibly benefit from this type of discussion, and what type of numbers we are looking at.

There are two price lists that we have in the community of Tulita: non-government customers pricing of gasoline in Tulita at $1.76 a litre, and then we have the government customers pricing, which is $1.61. What is the difference?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The other part of being a trapper is to be a businessman, entrepreneur. Are there any courses that are offered to trappers, say, in the off-trapping season where they learn to be a businessman, thinking on their feet and thinking quick, in terms of how to put together a budget, what things they need and what tools they would need to be a successful business person? Is there any type of trapping business program we can offer the trappers off-season, so they can prepare for the fall season when the trapping opens up again?

Trapping is a unique skill, and to be a trapper requires a lot of hard work, a lot of smarts, a lot of heart. I want to ask the Minister of ITI, in his role as the Minister, to look at if there is a type of discussion happening within his department to support the trappers and to initiate a type of apprenticeship program for the young trappers that want to come out to be a trapper. That is an honourable position that should be supported, and I commend this government for doing all it can to help these trappers.

Is there any type of discussion happening within the Department of ITI to have a...

The increase of the development of the Sahtu, you know we’re early in the development. We are spending just over $630 million in exploration. Of course, there are a lot of social impacts that are going to happen with that money and the development we are talking about today. We need that money.

I want to ask the minister if he can work with his colleagues to make a strong argument to the federal government so that they can release some of the dollars, all of these dollars to the Northwest Territories to help us with the social impacts of oil and gas development. We need that. Can I ask the...

The Minister and I did attend the exploration readiness session. One of the issues that the communities talked about was the past Mackenzie Gas Project Socio-economic Development Fund of $500 million that the federal government was holding to deal with the impacts.

I want to ask the Minister, is there any way that he’s working with the Sahtu leadership to ask the federal government if they would release the Sahtu portion to deal with the interest of the oil and gas exploration that could and is happening in the Sahtu region regarding some of the issues we are talking about today.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I asked the government if they would put the challenge, the same as us, out to our communities, talk to our youth right through this forum right now, in this time, and ask if they would help us get help in our region to support the Minister and themselves and to put a challenge out there so that the youth can also help with this forum. We don’t have to do things for them. Let them do things for themselves. I put the challenge out there.

Would the Minister put some form of challenge to the people, along with us to our young people, that if they want to live, they should...