Norman Yakeleya

I want to switch gears now a little bit here with the NWT Hydro Strategy. The Minister is overseeing this Hydro Strategy also?

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Can the Minister briefly tell me if there are some plans in place with this government and the Sahtu through the Sahtu Health and Social Services, or some other government agency that the department is overseeing, that they from time to time could monitor the progression of the building of the long-term care facility, where they would be able to monitor and keep checks and balances as to the progression of this entire long-term care facility?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to ask a question to the Minister on the support for commercial harvesting and processing and marketing fish and meat in the Territories. We have heard it on the news and my colleague Jane Groenewegen has talked about it.

I want to ask the Minister, we have world-class fishing here in Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake and other areas in the North here. We have some money here allocated to the marketing of fish and the meat. We heard from the news report the fishermen’s situation. We also heard from our colleague here. I want to ask the Minister if we...

Thank you. This Assembly, this MECC plus the climate change added onto the name now, are they going to look at renewing this Energy Plan?

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister and I had a tour in the Sahtu and we stopped in Deline. We talked to the people in Deline. The people in Deline know that the old long-term care facility was shut down in 1994 and that it hasn’t been opened since. The people want to know, there are some units there that some of the older people wanted to see if the Minister could consider, with asking his colleagues, if some of those units could be opened so that they can bring some of the people back from outside the region so they can come back and stay there for the last days of their life on Earth...

Thank you. I’ll stay tuned until we get to the EDI meeting when the Minister has that type of information coming forward.

The question I have now for the Minister is one I spoke to earlier, about the strong support of I have for the Minister to support our local fur trading program, Take a Kid Trapping program, and the amount of support the communities have seen in Colville Lake and some of the smaller communities. This program is very valuable, especially in the lifestyle. So I want to just give more of a comment and tell the Minister that we support it and we look forward to this program. It...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question for the Minister. I know the Minister sits with the Ministerial Energy Coordinating Committee. Is that true?

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Over the last nine years since I’ve been the MLA for Sahtu, I’ve been working with several governments and this government here, the last government and this government here, I really want to, I guess, express mine and my people’s appreciation to the 16th and to this government here. We keep our eye on the prize of a long-term care facility.

In the Sahtu, many of our people, the elders, people that need 24-hour care, often have to go outside the region to get the long-term care facilities that they need. For example, in the Dementia Centre here in Yellowknife there are...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to ask the Minister on the impacts of closing and opening of mines and the oilfields and closing down. Is the Minister working on these things that we can have within our reading material? For example, Selwyn-Chihong is downscaling their mining production. This has some impacts in the Sahtu because the road comes through the Northwest Territories when they want to take out the minerals to market. Is there something that the Minister is working in the North?

We certainly look forward to it. I again ask, we continue looking, studying, studying and studying, and fly to different locations, and look at this plant, but other than contributing dollars to further studies and further studies I ask the question when will this hydro project see construction phases. When? The community’s been waiting for 16 or 17 years. Now he’s telling me there’s going to be another $100,000 study and next year there’s going to be another one.

I’m getting a little bit frustrated on this side here. I’d like to see some construction. The high cost of living in the Sahtu...