Norman Yakeleya

What I will do is I will fire the e-mail off to the Minister’s office. The request, I believe it was addressed to the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, and that is privy to this type of funding. Just for the community so I will let the Minister know that this is the wish of the community of Deline and let the appropriate officials deal with it then. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s always a pleasure to recognize the achievements of our young people and that is what I am going to do today. I’m speaking of Siobhan Quigg, a grade 11 student in Norman Wells. She is the only student from the Northwest Territories chosen to attend a French for Future Youth Forum in Quebec City later this week. The conference is to promote bilingualism. There were 125 applicants from across Canada and only 30 young people were chosen.

This is a real honour and a real testament to Miss Quigg’s proficiency in the French language, especially since there is not a lot of...

It is one thing to distribute it to all the departments and it’s another thing if they are following the spirit and intent of the memorandum of understanding that was negotiated between the government and the Sahtu Secretariat. So I will wait and see if the government is going to follow the spirit and intent of the memorandum of understanding that was signed in the last government.

I asked the Minister if the memorandum of understanding is distributed to the agencies and boards; for example, the Stanton Health Board, other agencies. I know the departments, NCPC, NWT Housing Corporation, those are corporations and boards and agencies. The deficiencies, well, that is another issue here. I am asking about the distribution of this with the departments, agencies and boards.

The park is a long way from actually coming under the territorial jurisdiction. I think there’s a 10-step process before we can actually see something. I think we’re on step three on having jurisdiction over the park. I appreciate having the signs up there; however, some people can’t read signs and so they just drive right past the signs and they continue to tear up the area with their ATVs. It’s a real shame that something like this continues and I’m asking if this department can look at some interim protection to restrict the use of the ATVs. The road is good. If they can stay sensibly on...

Well, Mr. Chair, it does seem that we’re moving forward to hopefully actual construction on the Bear River to have a hydro plant on the Bear River for the community of Deline.

On the other issue of the Taltson Hydro, I know that the Taltson has done a lot of work. There are things that still need to be discussed. I still think that it’s a viable project and that we could continue to have that project maybe not moving right now, probably just on life support for a year or two before we can see if there’s some movement on the mines or there are other initiatives out there that certainly could...

I’ll have to do a little bit more research and digging around in this to how they’ve been drawn down and what type of capacity building initiatives the Sahtu has been using towards helping them with this project. That’s it, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. He has made my day there, Mr. Chairman.

I want to ask another question. When some of the employees that do have to take off some special leave, I think the government has been pretty good with them on some leaves, like family sickness or there is a death in the family and they have some time off and there are some special circumstances that require more than their time off because of whatever they have to deal with in a family situation. So I think that is on a case-by-case basis, so I am not too sure if there is a general wide policy where cultural leave or custom...

Mr. Chair, the Mackenzie Valley development contributions, I want just a little more information on the Aboriginal capacity building initiatives. I understand from the previous page there is about $360,000. That’s what I wanted to ask this Minister, if he had some details he could pass out to the Members here to see the plans. We have six months left in this government to work closely with our communities that are going to be at ground zero at the pipeline, when the pipeline comes down. I’d like to see what programs are going to be supportive in capacity building. Thank you.

Thank you. I’ll keep my comments very brief too. The positions within the GNWT are growing each year. It seems like we’re adding new positions to our workforce. I’m not too sure what the plan is. Is there a time when I’m going to say we need to cut back on positions or hold it or to put a freeze on it? Also to continue to support the Aboriginal people into the government’s senior management into those type of positions.

I look forward to some of the initiatives that the Minister has embarked on. I think there are some real good ones. Laying out a plan, there are the baby boomers that are going...