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...

In the Colville Lake School it’s very difficult for the teachers to give the best attention to the students. Where in the capital planning process that the Minister can see that the Colville Lake students can have a chance to say yes, we could possibly get some planning studies done to put us on the capital planning projects to have a new school. Where?

It took eight years to get proper washroom facilities in our school. Could this be a measurement on how long a new school may be coming to Colville Lake? I want this government to examine clearly the benefits of building this school against the other projects when the time comes to determine which infrastructure projects we can take on in this government.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday we brought in a motion on early childhood development to show our concern that we want this government, our government, to focus on building a strong foundation for our future, whether it’s training, funding or structures.

We are, indeed, challenged with a fiscal responsibility of keeping afloat in the waters of economic uncertainty. However, we have set our goals in the 17th and we must, by all means, do our best to get there. We are approaching the critical mass of which infrastructure projects will see the light of day within this government. So much, yet so...

We had a very good presentation this afternoon from the Pembina Institute. It actually brought up some pretty good points. I thought it was very objective and I thought that the points that they brought out gave me some ideas and maybe other Members too as to how do we, if they are going to do hydraulic fracking then we want to make sure that it’s done in a responsible and environmentally safe way that we can have the best of both worlds so to speak. That’s the type of information I got this afternoon from that presentation. It made some really good points. We could have the hydraulic fracking...

Thank you, Madam Chair. The Minister has a very important department that deals with the basics of our land, water, air, life, and the way we look at things. It’s very important. I’m not very pleased that his budget is being reduced. It actually should be going up. I’m not the one to make that decision. This budget here is low. The Minister has some very key initiatives that need to be looked at.

The Minister talked about the Mackenzie River Basin and the quality and quantity of water entering the Northwest Territories from neighbouring jurisdictions. In our land claim agreement it states, in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I got up early this morning, picked up my pen and paper and had my good cup of coffee and I started writing down my notes on what I wanted to say about this motion. The first thing I did was get a list of the energy priorities investment for 2010. The last government committed $60 million to the projects. Mr. Hawkins has made several references to this priority list.

I looked at it and I put it on the floor, and said this is where the regions are getting the projects. This is where we committed $60 million, and that money just came out of the air. This is where we’re...

When these phone calls came from the leadership in the Sahtu… I want to ask the Minister to provide me what it costs the Housing Corporation to keep them operating and functional and how long they’ve been vacant and how can we work together to hope to get my people into these housing units.