Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Speaker, I’d like to ask some questions to the Minister of Finance. This morning I heard the Minister of Finance on CBC talk about the budget, and one part that he mentioned was about the Inuvik gas situation and he also added in a couple comments on the Norman Wells gas situation.

I want to ask the Minister what type of support will he be giving to the residents and to the businesses of Norman Wells once they make a decision as to what types of options they have to convert household supplies and appliances and also for the businesses to also convert to either propane, diesel or any other...

When we look down the Mackenzie Valley and you look into the communities, we have small communities. In a lot of our small communities probably about 60 to 70 percent of the people who live in our communities have some direct impact of residential schools, so there’s a high need for this. I want to ask the Minister where in his department is there a policy that says that if you, Mr. Yakeleya, want to go to a program for your family and yourself – and I have a lot of brothers and sisters and they had big families too – where in the policy that we can go to the department and say we want to go...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Would the department look at what type of programs are there for residential school survivors and the ones who are also affected by it?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Tomorrow, May 26th, is a very important day in the Northwest Territories. The last government recognized May 26th as National Residential School Reconciliation and Healing. The point that I want to raise this morning is that tomorrow is a day that this government is the only government in Canada that has recognized this day for residential school survivors.

In the Northwest Territories we affect over 10,000 students, and many communities in the Northwest Territories are feeling and healing on a recovery and healing through the residential schools. This is a chapter in...

Thank you, Madam Chair. My points I am going to be speaking on this afternoon are going to be around the way we do our operations as a government. As we’re well aware, the federal government gives the territorial government, the people of the Northwest Territories, about 75 percent of funding to do our own operations. We have not yet grown up enough for them. We need to do our own work to be fully accountable for our own spending and for the raising of our own money and operating as an independent, strong government. We still rely on the federal government for funds to operate our programs and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Town of Norman Wells feel very strongly that with the situation that happened in the town, the situation that was occurring that this government wasn’t there for them. They had to dig in their own bank account and take out the money and say, we will pay for the Hercules. We will pay for propane tanks. We will do this. The government did not come up and say, we will help you. To make insults worse, they said no, you are not eligible for extraordinary funding to help offset this here.

It’s a good thing they had strong financial planning that they were able to do this...

The government has supported the thinking with the Town of Norman Wells as how to best utilize their time, because Imperial Oil for 2013-14 will turn the gas off to the town, and the residents and businesses. We need to help them with their conversion of appliances. They are looking at options such as propane, diesel and biomass. It’s going to be a mixture. Hopefully one day they’ll have an easy conversion back to the natural gas situation.

I am asking this government, once the dust has settled, is this government going to be in their capacity to help the people and businesses to convert their...

Mr. Speaker, the policy of the genocide intentions by the federal government was to take the children away from the family and do that. We’re no different than doing this with this program here, taking people away and looking at treating them in this manner. I think what we’re looking for is a family treatment program. That’s the power and the strength of the people here. I ask the Minister, would he look at this as one possibility, one solution of family treatment programs on the land as a starting point where they start doing the true healing and reconciliation of the suffering that was done...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Ramsay talked about some of the sizeable, significant things that could happen in the Sahtu. I want to ask the Minister if he can let his Finance Minister know, and Cabinet know, that next time they do a budget and report that, you know, we could have some indication as to some of the things that could be happening there.

Right now we’re talking a lot of Mackenzie Gas Project, but we don’t know when that’s going to be built. Whenever I guess is sometime way in the future, but something’s happening in the Sahtu right now that should have had some attention in the...

As the Minister mentioned, the Sahtu could be a real busy place like a beehive. I hope he’s not referring to us as honey buckets here and being dealt with in the last four years in Colville Lake. I want to ask the Minister if they’re looking at high-level discussions in the Sahtu because of the shift of the playing and just the way things have turned out. Is the Minister willing to look at maybe opening up some discussions on a Highway Strategy in our region for oil companies, communities that we can possibly have a new discussion paper on looking at some new initiatives that could happen...