Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Premier tell me as to why the AIP wasn’t released earlier in terms of letting the people understand and read it, rather than being posted on the CBC website? Just recently it was released to the public.

Thank you. I guess there are the various figments to the history of the bilateral agreements and negotiations. So I’ll leave it at that.

What I’ve been hearing is that the Aboriginal governments that are not signatory yet to this agreement have some questions and they want to assess and analyze the agreement. My understanding is that if we have some of the Aboriginal governments come on side, then that puts them into some funding arrangements. If they do not come on side to sign the AIP, then there’s no funding available to them. Is that a true statement to the Premier?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I will speak about the devolution agreement and the impact on my people and our land claim. Mr. Speaker, the Premier and the federal government signed this AIP without the majority of the Aboriginal governments. How did we justify this action? Yet the Premier has said, come be a partner in building our future together. How can the Premier say come to the table when only after you signed?

Mr. Speaker, I believe the signing of this agreement was rushed. For reasons unknown to me -- I can only speculate -- the AIP was signed without 75 percent of the Aboriginal...

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?

Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate that from the Minister. I know that another area that I need to talk about and because this is an operation and maintenance budget, I have...(inaudible)...in terms of at least the planning of the operations and maintenance. Anyhow, I won’t get into the details.

I want to tell the Minister that if they had a hospital or services that I saw firsthand in Edmonton... I appreciate the Territories have a staff person at our hospital. She was very helpful with some of the stuff I had to deal with. It sure does make a big difference when you are out looking at...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to say to the Minister, in terms of the health care services in our small communities and some of the equipment that I’ve seen, now it certainly shows that there’s a great improvement to the health centres. There’s actually some equipment there that’s beneficial to the people and their residents. I really want to thank the Minister for putting those in our communities. It makes a big difference when we have people come to our health centres on an emergency basis and there’s actually equipment there that’s being used by our nurses now. They’re very appreciative of...

Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the Minister regarding the change of the health benefits programs that we’re administering. I know that puts a lot of pressure onto our financial pocket here in the GNWT in terms of how that rolls out. I want to ask the Minister about the challenges that we’re going to see changing the program and if that puts any constraint onto some of the programs we want to see in our communities or resources in our communities such as the community of Colville Lake having a nurse there or having a social worker there. We just seem to be operating on the accessibility from Fort...

Certainly, Mr. Chairman, I agree with the Member for speaking in support of the bandwidth. Certainly we would see it beneficial in our communities and to lend our support to see this government put some resources that would eliminate some of the headaches that we have in our smaller health centres in terms of providing efficient health care to our residents in the Sahtu and other communities that certainly would benefit from an e-health care system. If you could work closely with your Cabinet colleagues.

I want to ask the Minister in terms of working with our health boards. It’s about three...

I have a question for clarification. I want to ask the Minister, Mr. Chair, if the Tlicho cultural coordinator, is this part of their self-government arrangements in regards to this position. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about the youth. Certainly we do our best to support the youth. We want to keep our youth alive. I want to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services what types of programs are in her department that would gear towards working with the youth and specifically the elders in terms of having them come together and look at programs or initiatives that they can do to support each other in the challenges that both the elders and the youth face today.