Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of Justice what the average cost is of housing an inmate at the North Slave Correctional Centre.

I hope the department can rectify this situation as soon as possible. As you know, students who leave small communities and come back to do their practicum or to go back to work, it’s a good incentive for other students to continue on their education and role modelling. I would ask the Minister again if he would commit to see if this resolution can be done sometime within the life of this government.

The one instance I made reference to and the Minister has just talked about, the Grande Prairie institution. Is the Minister now giving the House a deadline on when maybe a resolution could be satisfactory to the student or the community to have the student or future students come up to the North to do their practicum?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When it comes to a good education, there are many challenges youth and adults in small communities in the Northwest Territories have. An education, Mr. Speaker, we are told will provide opportunities to find good jobs for our students, a job suited to them and one that will give them satisfaction and a decent income. That’s why we support our young people to go to school.

An adult student in the Sahtu is facing the barrier challenges right now, Mr. Speaker. She has completed coursework at Grande Prairie College in Alberta to be a teacher assistant. In order to complete...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask the Minister in terms of community health programs, is the department looking at a comprehensive family program? We have a bunch of programs all over the place, and have they put together a unique northern, even an Aboriginal cultural family program, and yet in my seven years I haven’t really seen a family program come out of the communities in terms of treatment in terms of addiction, family violence or any type of abuse for the whole family. Is that something that we should be asking more forcefully in terms of putting family programs together? I want...

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the explanation. I want to ask the Minister about the billing issues in medical travel. Do we still have some disputes with the federal government in regard to medevac or any type of billing issues? I know we have a history and we used to have some issues there. Do we still carry on with some of the outstanding issues that we had in the past with the feds?

Thank you. Just to follow up, Mr. Chair, on the supplementary health benefits and the recommendations that came from the committee. I know in the Minister’s sessional statement from the last session she talked about this spring we would have new policies coming out and see where things are going to be followed up on the recommendations. I guess I just wanted to get clarification in terms of what she’s exchanging with MLA Hawkins in terms of their report that the government is now implementing on the supplementary health. I want to see where the working poor, how that issue is being followed up...

Thank you. Can the Premier explain where the thousands of dollars that have been given to the regions went if it wasn’t to explain the devolution?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I talked about devolution. I want to ask the Premier some questions. I want to ask him in terms of the mandates for going forward, when and who decided that the Aboriginal governments won’t have direct participation at the tables when they were negotiating the draft AIP? So far what I’ve been told and what I’ve read is only the GNWT and the federal governments were negotiating and they drafted the AIP. The Aboriginal governments were briefed from time to time, but they didn’t really have a seat at the table per se in terms of the direct negotiations on this important...

Again, I’d like to ask the Minister about medical travel. I understand that the department will be reviewing its Medical Travel Policy and I myself being personally involved in medical travel in the Northwest Territories, look forward to having some meaningful discussions with the Minister and the staff about my own experience with medical travel. I won’t take up the time now to talk about it, but at a different time in terms of how medical has been with me at least and my family and I’m not very happy with it. I don’t need to say any more right now, but I wanted to have the opportunity to...