Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I spoke about the Alberta tar sands and the pollution that’s coming down from that one specific project. There are also other projects in Alberta, B.C., and Saskatchewan that are also contributing to the pollution of the Northwest Territories. I want to ask the Minister of Environment about monitoring locations along the Great Slave Lake or down the Mackenzie River in terms of the quality of water. Are they checking along the watershed?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to say a few words here. I know the government here has been working pretty close with my communities and I was just thinking about Colville Lake. It has been in the news and I have talked to the press about this with the water and sewer facilities in the school and the health centre. What I heard back was that it is a Municipal and Community Affairs issue and a community of Colville Lake issue, not they are working in regards to that infrastructure. I want to ensure members from Colville Lake that this issue here is being worked on. There are certainly other...

I look forward to the information. More importantly, I think the people who were asked to move out to make way for these renovations would be very much interested in knowing when they can move back into their units. So I hope that whatever needs to happen happens, to get them back into their units.

I want to ask the Minister if he would look into that situation and report back as to what happened, why there was such a delay to move people back into those units. It’s put a lot of stress on a lot of people in the community of Deline. People are overcrowded, they’re asked to move into other...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope the Minister can work with him more in terms of the priority here in the North of the Mackenzie Valley Highway. I want to ask the Minister, I know the Premier and Cabinet have made some other recommendations to the Norman Wells initiative on funding the Mackenzie Valley Highway. Can the Minister inform the House if other options have been exhausted? We’re actually begging the federal Minister to put some dollars so that we can have that highway, so that we can reduce the cost of living and strengthen the sovereignty of the Northwest Territories. Does the Minister...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of Transportation some questions on the Mackenzie Valley Highway. I understand that the Minister met with some western Transportation Ministers and I wonder if they had any discussion on the National Transportation Policy on this dream of many people in the valley in terms of having some more concrete realities, I guess I could say, in terms of putting the steel to the ground to open up the Mackenzie Valley Highway. I know there were some project description reports done and I think we’re close to going to the second level.

Mr. Speaker, certainly there are some concerns raised by the people along the Mackenzie, in terms of the fish that they are seeing now in their nets. I want to ask if the Minister would raise, again, this issue to the Minister if he could come down during the summer, come down the Mackenzie River, look at the fish, live on the Mackenzie River and see how serious this issue is, or just take him to court for polluting our water? I mean, that’s how serious it is. So I want to ask the Minister that.

Mr. Speaker, if this new founding has come to light through the federal government, I’m not too sure when the 90 days starts or when it’s running out. What can we do more to give a push to the federal government to make sure these monitoring stations are in place and that they’re monitoring the effects of the Alberta tar sands, amongst other things, that are coming down into the Great Slave Lake or the Mackenzie River? What can we do to push the federal government to get on this right away?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Clean, fresh water is the Northwest Territories most precious resource. It supports all of life. We have lots of water, Mr. Speaker, and it’s the defining future of the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, we must protect our water from the upstream pollution and the polluters. Mr. Speaker, the operations in the Alberta tar sands are poisoning our water. In the last four years the amount of arsenic, mercury, lead and other toxins have increased by 26 percent in the tailings ponds that are located in our watershed. The tar sands also create air pollution that poisons the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to take the time and the opportunity out of the Committee of the Whole to recognize my older brother up in the gallery, Raymond Yakeleya, who has come to see the proceedings of the House. Thank you.

I’d like to ask the Minister about this section. Mr. Chair, the operations in Deline, there were some units that weren’t quite finished and completed. I went there a couple of weeks ago and the people were still out of those public housing units. They’re still boarded up, so to speak; no one was in them. I wanted to know why is that? They said it would only be a couple weeks, a couple months, now it’s been months and months and months and the people haven’t moved back into their rental units. I’m pretty sure that maybe it might get done this spring or maybe this summer. Can I ask the Minister...