Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to ask the Minister… In his opening comments, he talked about the activity. This is an O and M operational budget. I want to take the opportunity for the Minister if there is somewhere later on in the detail that would speak to looking at having some Transportation permanent positions in the Sahtu, somewhere down the line that the Minister can come back to this House or through some briefings. They are Transportation for highways. It does come out of Fort Simpson’s operation and our airport’s Transportation comes out of Inuvik. I think we have arrived at a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be speaking in support of this motion. Thank you, Mr. Moses and Mr. Bromley, for bringing this to the floor. They’re highlighting the importance of our youth, highlighting the importance of our workers, highlighting the importance of our families and the people that put these programs together in the Department of Education, the Department of Health, and the government itself to continue to support the early childhood development.

I spoke earlier about supporting the most important teachers in the child’s life are the parents. Usually above 90 percent it’s...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to go back to item 6, acknowledgements.

---Unanimous consent granted

Thank you, Madam Chair. The deputy minister and the Minister are correct that some of our airports are going to become more valuable space lots and that. I do look forward to their advanced airport commercial land development to see where things are at.

I want to ask the Minister, at one time I know that the fee structures within our airport were not fair and consistent. I know the department is doing some work to look at where fairness and consistency right across the board on our fee structures and landing fees. Sometimes I think we could be making more money. I know my constituent in Norman...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m going to tag along with Mr. Menicoche on the question of the small community airports. I’m talking specifically about Colville Lake and that project. I know that community has advanced somewhat to the stage of near completion and I wanted to look at continuing to work with the department to design/build a terminal. I know that’s in the books. There’s still work yet to be done to complete the new airport. They went through the learning process and they came out pretty well. I wish the best to the people in Trout Lake to work out similar situations as we have done in...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Transportation department is going to be a very important department in the next five to 10 years from now. I see that there’s an 8.7 percent increase from 2011-2012 Main Estimates and I’m hoping that the increase will be higher and larger in the coming years.

I do want to take this time here to let the Transportation Minister know that we really need to get specific down to some of the highway strategies for the upcoming years. We have put some money aside already for the Mackenzie Valley Highway. Specifically, the federal government’s contribution to the Tuk...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories held its Third Annual Education Hall of Fame in the Great Hall of the Legislative Assembly. The inductees were chosen by five judges and congratulate all the chosen inductees from their regions.

The Sahtu wishes to congratulate Ms. Betty Barnaby of Fort Good Hope, who has been teaching at the Chief T’Selehye School and recently graduated from the Teachers Education Program in Fort Smith; a double winner indeed. I, along with the Sahtu region, would like to congratulate Ms. Betty Barnaby for her prestigious recognition. Truly...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It has been said by our elders that the weapons of our warriors today will be education; that our battles will be won in schools, colleges, universities and on our land. It also has been said that we will not win our battles in the bars or in the streets or in jails. We will actually stay stuck blaming others if we stay there.

I want to say that this early childhood development theme that we are having here, I support it so much that we should be looking at helping the parents. Usually it is the single mothers that stay home with the child for the first three years and...

I have three follow-up questions so I will ask them all at once here. The first one I asked earlier about the airport position in the Sahtu. We have it now. Our office is up in Inuvik. I’d like to certainly see where it would be more advantageous to have it in the Sahtu. I hope the Minister would give some consideration and thoughts to future business plans or something within the next couple months to say yes, that’s something that we can look at. Mr. Minister did give me a little response, but I’m going to ask in this area.

The second one is that the community airports, our airports are...

I want just to again relay to the Minister and to the government that the experience up in Colville Lake has been quite good. They did quite well. I think the department did good in this process here. Congratulations to working well with my people.

I want to ask the Minister my second question about the commercial lands at the airports are becoming increasingly scarce in terms of the development of lands. I want to ask the Minister what type of plans he has on the books for advancing the airport commercial lots. People are asking now because things are getting busy in Inuvik here and in...