Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Speaker, certainly I look forward to the new policy. I’m so happy I just about choked on it here, Mr. Speaker. I’m very pleased to hear what the Minister has said. I wanted to ask the Minister, there are 600 families in the Sahtu and 330 families make less than $75,000. I want to ask the Minister in regards to the public housing units in the Sahtu. Will the Minister also be coming forward in terms of rent scale adjustments so that families do have an equal chance to make it in society in terms of adjusting their rents that is liveable in the public housing units?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of the Housing Corporation in terms of working with the home ownership of the housing in my region. We seem to be running into a lot of issues with land tenure on the Commissioner’s lots and sometimes that prevents applications from being looked at or being seriously considered for approval. I want to ask the Minister if, in his strategy, would there be some movement in terms of how do we deal with the land tenure issue, especially for the elders in my communities.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the Premier and I met with the Sahtu people the other day in Deline, we heard leaders talk about housing. It is still in the minds of our elders, Mr. Speaker, when the government came to our communities and asked our people to move off the land and into government houses, and that they would only have to pay $2 a month for their house. It is very clear to our elders when the government told this to them. Why would people ask to move into government houses? More importantly, what was told to them and promised to my people by the government about housing?

Mr. Speaker...

Certainly if there is anything that you can do with your counterparts, Mr. Minister, to let the federal government know the importance of their support. You talked about the energy-efficient homes that we want in the Northwest Territories. That means working with your other colleagues in government here to put these types of houses in our communities. I hope you have luck with the president coming to the North. Certainly we welcome him to look at some of the homes that we have in our communities, in Colville Lake to look at some of the situations that people have to live there. He may have a...

The Minister is correct that the DEA does have the discretion as to where they spend their O and M. In saying that, we have about 450 computers in the Sahtu that certainly need support, IT support. Right now there’s none in terms of unless the DEA takes a little pot here, takes a pot here, and there’s different programming that they also need to be funded. There’s no dedicated dollars going to IT support in the Sahtu schools and that’s something that I want to ask the Minister if that’s a true statement that there is no IT support in our schools for computers unless the education board...

I certainly hope the Board of Governors would make some concrete move in terms of working with our high school in our communities to implement a trades program within their term as governors. I hope Aurora College can do that for the people in our communities.

I also want to say that I hope they look at putting a trades school into some of our communities. I know this mobile program, Trades on Wheels, as the Minister talked about, but we need something more than mobile. We need something permanent, especially our communities that are against the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline route where there are some...

I want to ask the Minister, in terms of the mandatory cultural orientation for all teachers, if this item would be an item that could be part of the Collective Agreement on a going forward basis.

I appreciate the Minister committing to look at it. I’m hoping we can go one step further to make Norman Wells and Colville Lake communities that will receive base funding like any other college in my region and establish some base funding for those two centres. I appreciate the Minister’s commitment to poke his head in there and start digging around to find out what’s going on.

My point, Mr. Chair, is the funding here that’s been established, $1.6 million. My point is that this fund has been here for a couple of years, 2009-2010 was $1.4 million, we didn’t have any cultural orientations, not until we started pushing it in this House, in the communities. All of a sudden, okay, let’s do it, but where do we find the money. Now everybody thinks it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Everybody is benefitting, no doubt about it. I’m just saying why take it out of the Aboriginal achievement funding? This should have been done a long time ago. That’s what I’m pointing to.

I...

Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the Minister about base funding. I think two of my communities in the Sahtu are not eligible or not receiving base funding at the Aurora College operations facilities. I want to ask the Minister if this is an oversight. Tulita, Deline, Fort Good Hope receive base funding. Norman Wells and Colville Lake do not receive base funding for Aurora College programs like the other communities. I wonder why this special treatment for Norman Wells and Colville Lake.