Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Chair, I want to ask the Minister on the Aboriginal cultural awareness training within his department. I know they are drafting a framework that will set up the GNWT’s desire to increase the Aboriginal cultural awareness and appreciate this in the workforce. Are you going to have it ready by this fall and where are you going to do the first pilot of this cultural training with our workforce?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the future, thinking forward and creating some territorial potential on this national campaign, has his department ever looked at a day that they could all celebrate Buckle Up, water prevention day? They do that. They have national days to recognize. Would his department look at something like that? Would a campaign like this be kicked off in the Territories?

Mr. Speaker, in the Buckle Up program, I mentioned in my Member’s statement that it’s usually for the people who are mostly south of the lake, but I also mentioned that up in the Mackenzie Delta they had Dempster Highway No. 8. Hopefully in the future we will have Inuvik-Tuk highway. They would be part of the campaign on the road there. In the Water Safety Program and the Buckle Up program, in the communities that apply for this program. We need this for the community council, hamlet council, town council or the fire department. They also go up to $1,000 for promotion dollars. When will the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Northwest Territories has gone from the worst to the best. In our 18 months of our transportation program, we have had zero fatalities on our roads and our trails.

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A large part of the reason is that people are getting in the habit of wearing their seatbelts in their vehicles, or in the habit of wearing their lifejackets in their boats. The Drive Alive program has challenged communities to buckle up. The Drive Alive program has a challenge and your community can win big. All of the communities that we represent can win big in this challenge program. One of...

I’m up to…okay. No. It’s okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to follow up on Mr. Bromley’s exchange with the Minister and the reason why he’s stating that possibly there’s no supplier in Norman Wells, for example, or the Sahtu. Because we don’t have the support there. No one’s going to get up and just start putting the wood pellets to the fire and say, come. It’s ludicrous.

We’ve been saying that if you had an initiative to put a wood pellet boiler in one of the communities, like the Fort Good Hope new school, you would have had the suppliers in Good Hope. It would have been there. I guess I’m moving into an...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The Minister listed a number of other programs the departments are doing to increase the understanding of Aboriginal culture. I think it works both ways. That’s the beautiful part of reconciliation and healing. I think the Minister has listed some fairly good initiatives by some of the departments.

I do want to say that the Department of Education and Culture so far, for myself I think, has done an excellent job, because those teachers go out for one week on the land and spend a week on the land. It’s a directive by the Minister. For the teachers, you have to go out to the...

Thank you. I look forward to it. I hope they have some digital. We can go on the land and experience that. I’m not too sure. I guess that they’ll adjust to it, so I felt all the time that we have a population in my region very strong Aboriginal. I felt that senior government people need to be immersed into our culture. I feel sometimes that we missed the boat and I found that, with this government here, with the Minister, we may be bridging some understanding amongst ourselves. I do want to say good luck. I do want to know where you’re going to pilot. I wouldn’t mind a time where we could find...

Mr. Speaker, I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that the Speaker be authorized to set such sitting days and hours as the Speaker, after consultation, deems fit to assist with the business before the House.

Mr. Speaker, the Drive Alive program has been a very successful program. It certainly shows in the records. Has this program had any type of appetite from the other provincial jurisdictions that look at the North in terms of leadership and safety on the road, trails and water? Have other governments looked at the North on the Drive Alive program to say this is one good program and we should also be using it on a national level?