Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to say I was very impressed with the young fellow that Mr. Dolynny talked about. He’s got a good future ahead of him.

I want to talk about Raymond Taniton. Raymond Taniton co-authored a book called At the Heart of It. It’s the seventh book in the Land of our Storybook series. Tessa MacIntosh was the photographer and Mindy Willet was the co-author with Raymond Taniton.

Raymond is a Sahtugot’ine, which means people from the Great Bear Lake area. He lives in Deline and is one of the many gifted leaders in the community in the Sahtu region.

After Europe colonized...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Minister. Through this whole issue here, I think we worked out a pretty good path as to how we want to resolve this issue. Between now and when we have some of the discussions, can the Minister ask his colleagues to look at some of their own numbers in regard to if the health centre is getting more calls than ever because of out-of-control drinking in our communities, or the justice is seeing more people in courts or jail because of out-of-control drinking? I want to know if the Minister can provide some of that information when we have our next meeting.

The Minister outlined a pretty clear path as to what transpired between now and what’s happening right now today. I thank the Minister for that. Norman Wells last year made $2.5 million in liquor sales. Inuvik made $7.4 million. I expect to see Norman Wells reach up to $5 million this year. Hopefully, by the fall time we will have some type of decision as to how we go about looking at this issue here and help people in the surrounding communities.

I have a motion from the communities in the Sahtu to say we need to make changes to the Norman Wells liquor store. I want to ask the Minister if that...

I noted also in the Minister’s statement about the airports, how Norman Wells and Tulita have been very busy with the activity of the last year’s winter program. Now we are just getting some indication that Husky will probably ramp up their oil and gas exploration to almost a year-round type of activity. They’re also talking about some roads that they want to build in the Sahtu. Would the Minister, sometime in the next three or four months, start to let the industry know, for example, the Explorer Group that’s formed in the Sahtu region, to look at the concept of partnership in terms of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Some time ago the Minister of ITI made a ministerial statement on the oil and gas potential activities in the Northwest Territories. In his statement he said that the industry experts believe that there’s a potential of one or two billion barrels in the area just waiting to be tapped in the Tulita district.

I want to ask the Minister, because of the renewed interest in oil and gas exploration and development in the Sahtu region, and as the Minister also noted in his ministerial statement of infrastructure in Transportation, I want to ask the Minister in his statement...

In the Ministerial statement, certainly he talks about the activities happening all in the Northwest Territories, and certainly, he mentioned some of the things about Ottawa and partnerships. He is correct; it is costly to build infrastructure. I mean, we already had this known to us on the Deh Cho Bridge. We also know this from the Inuvik-Tuk road. We also know that those are great lessons for us to continue moving, but, hopefully, this does not stop us from putting in some major infrastructure in the Northwest Territories. I want to ask the Minister, will he meet with the oil and gas...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the weekend I was thinking about this day because of a motion that was read in the House last week. I was thinking about the students that we are thinking about. I was thinking about the parents who are not here today with us, parents who put their trust in the hands of the church, the government, either by sending the children to residential schools or if the parents were so scared that when the children were taken from the community, such as my uncle, when they heard the boat coming in and stopping in Tulita, they would run to the bushes and they would hide. The...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have jotted down a few notes. I will say some more later on to this motion.

From the early ‘60s through the late ‘70s, never have I imagined that a government, let alone people who would one day want to observe a day in the life of a student of a survivor of a residential school, like me who grew up in such an institution. There are many me’s in this situation.

Like I said earlier, when I was sitting home this weekend, we are the ones who made it out. As the saying goes, only the strongest survive, and we also had enough of carrying the whole world on our shoulders and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. How would people in our communities go about this? You say they can call, but who would they call? How would this be communicated to the people in our small communities? Would it be done on TV, ads, workshops, conferences? How would they know that they can call this number to know where they can get some information? Thank you.

I appreciate the Minister taking the question. I wasn’t too sure which Minister would take it. I want to continue on with the Minister of Justice. For the students that did not come back from these residential schools, there are stories, there are innuendos, there are assumptions, there are people telling us this is what happened to that little boy or little girl. I want to ask the Minister of Justice if he would look into his department to see where he can look with the staff that he has, to say we want to get down to the bottom of this, what is it that we need to do. Can the Minister provide...