Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a few comments. I was going to wait for detail; however, I’m going to make a few comments and I do not need a response from the Minister. I’m going to make my comments to the Minister and I’ll wait for some of the details.

I do want to say to the Minister that there are some really huge initiatives that are happening within his department, and one of the big initiatives is as a result, I’m hoping, from the achievement test results. It’s shown clear as day the state of education in our small communities. I’m not very proud to hold up that we are putting our children...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This morning a youth from Tulita called and said that they are organizing themselves. The youth was talking about the challenging times they’re having in the community and that they are working on various program initiatives to get out on the land. The youth are now starting to see the benefits of going out on the land, learning about their way of life and just to get out to certain areas around Tulita.

Also, the youth in Norman Wells are also finding it difficult to meet some of today’s challenges with the issues they have to deal with. Later in life, if they don’t take...

Mr. Chair, it is very important as the Minister pointed out. It’s a very serious issue here, what the Minister’s department is dealing with. We’re taking over a new department. The federal government is releasing its grip on this issue here and transferring over to the GNWT which is working closely with our land claim governments, land claim organizations, First Nation governments.

One of the important issues, listening to my colleagues, is the resource management units have a big cast ahead of them. I believe that properly fit and trained and going through the process, they will do their job...

Mr. Chair, the point I want to speak on is the unauthorized use of lands or land development. Is the Minister working with the land claim corporations and the regions that settled their land claim to work with them on this issue here?

Geez, thank you, Minister. Mr. Speaker, we certainly understand the type of requirements to be a power lineman. We have one fellow actually from Deline who is an NTPC power man, Mr. Kenny. So we know we can do it in the Sahtu.

I’m asking the Minister to look at these challenges. The Sahtu people are up to the challenges. We want to establish a permanent NTPC presence in the Sahtu region because of these types of situations. Thank God it was warm and it didn’t last very long.

I want to ask the Minister if he’s willing to look at, during the life of this budget, this Assembly, if we can see this...

The NTPC workers in communities of Norman Wells and Tuk and Inuvik, I certainly appreciate the types of conditions they have to be challenged with in order to get into a community that has a power outage and the emergency rating.

I want to ask the Minister, in regards to the Sahtu region, does the Sahtu region have qualified power linemen that could have fixed the issue in Norman Wells that happened on Sunday? Do we have people in the region who are able to do that work, other than wait for Simpson or Inuvik crews to come in?

How do you top that, Mr. Speaker? He’s a good student, he’s teachable.

Mr. Speaker, there’s a song Dr. Hook sings, “Storms never last, baby.” Mr. Speaker, listen to this song because there was a really big storm in the Sahtu over the past weekend here. It was so strong that the storm blew out some transponders, or trippers, in Norman Wells. People were fighting after a couple hours of having no power. When it got to the three hour point, they were getting kind of nervous because they didn’t know what was happening.

I just happened to be there and I called the Minister, and the Minister answered...

Mr. Chair, I appreciate the comments from the Minister. Those are all my questions.

Mr. Chair, the unauthorized use of land or land development, especially in the settlement areas is clearly defined land occupancy for people out there. I appreciate the Minister working closely with the rightful owners of land settlements.

Is he working closely with the Department of ENR? I know ENR in the past has been cataloguing where cabin owners are, whether they’re Aboriginal cabin owners or non-Aboriginal cabin owners. What areas of the land in the Sahtu are being used? Is the Minister working closely with them in regards to identifying some of the unauthorized use of land or land...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I questioned the Minister last week on a concept and the Minister responded positively to an idea. Given the 260-some-odd days left in our term, is there a possibility of looking at a pilot project like they had with the old TEST program. There are some athletes that are very gifted in the small communities and our centres. There are athletes who are going to school and are just all around in our communities. I wonder if there’s any type of discussion or looking at this from a territorial perspective. The TEST program was successful because of the dedication of staff...