Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Speaker, the support that is there, sometimes it is not meeting the needs of these elders and their families. What can be done to increase the support so that families do have time to rest and take a break to take care of their families?

Right now we have six families, possibly, in Deline who are going to need support for the families. What can the Minister do and what can this government do in terms of supporting these families, in terms of the needs for these elders?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to recognize an elder from the Sahtu and advisor to me, Mr. Andrew John Kenny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues.

The Department of Education, Culture and Employment, in collaboration with Aurora College, should:

establish key performance indicators and targets for expected results for adult literacy and basic education programs;

review the reporting requirements of the adult literacy and basic education directive to ensure that key information is being collected;

ensure these reporting requirements are coordinated with those of the literacy strategy;

monitor adherence to these reporting requirements, and take formal action in cases where requirements are not...

Certainly we want to enhance the resources and the support in the communities and certainly that is one of our goals. However, I want to ask the Minister: When can we reach that goal? What is it that she needs us to do in terms of going into the communities in the Sahtu, going into Deline and saying we have these dollars, here, we are going to help these families in need?

Right now there are six families that do need palliative care support. Right now we are not meeting them and soon we’re going to have these families make some tough decisions as to sending their families into Inuvik or...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I spoke earlier about the elders and the passing of them. Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services, I know it’s been a wish of the elders prior to them passing, that a lot of them want to stay in their own communities and be laid to rest there. However, sometimes that’s not possible. I want to ask the Minister, in terms of helping with the families with the elders’ wishes, what type of palliative care do they have in the Sahtu region in terms of helping with the elders and their last days in their communities.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The chapter of a strong Metis life was closed last week in Tulita, Mr. Speaker. A Metis man of the land, a gentle man with a loud voice, you knew when he was in the house. Also, Mr. Speaker, there are many honourable elders who have passed away in the Sahtu this year too. Mr. Speaker, with them we lay to rest their experience, their knowledge and their wisdom that make us proud to be Dene or Metis in the Sahtu region and in the North.

Mr. Speaker, in keeping with the passing of the elders, the ones who hold the sacred knowledge to speak with wisdom and live life as life...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is no small potatoes initiative here going ahead in terms of this program.

Mr. Speaker, we in the communities have eaten off our land for many years; our food, our fish and vegetables. We are still here. My people are still in the Sahtu. It is the current policies and regulations that stop us. We need to change that. I want to ask this Minister in terms of changing these policies. You have to come down to realities of the communities to make this happen and always be beggars in terms of our being slaves to the current policies that prevent us from what is actually...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about the Sahtu and talked about the remarkable harvesting that we had of spuds in our region, actually now unofficially the potato capital of the Northwest Territories. I want to ask the Minister in regard to this area here, in terms of on a going-forward basis, would the Minister look at ways, as he stated in his ministerial statement, in terms of creating more avenues to have food produced in the North that would be sold in the grocery stores and that, more importantly, the marketing should happen as soon as possible with these...

Thank you. I said, Mr. Chair, that when we talk about capacity and we talk about infrastructure, capital, sometimes you just need to wade a little bit into the program, and certainly I would welcome a sit down with the Minister to talk about programs; that’s not an issue. The Minister is actually very good to me in terms of talking about program issues. I’m happy to sit down and talk with him.

I’m talking about facilities, capital infrastructure, when it comes before us, that programs like the Sahtu, like he mentioned, is a great success and we wish it to be more successful by increasing the...

The questions I’m going to ask are on capital infrastructure. So they’re going to skate in between a fine line in terms of how the programs are associated; it’s a key component to my questions. So I want to ask the Minister, he said that they have the capacity and I know that there’s a high population of aboriginal inmates at the centres here and that they are housed in these, what we call pods, and sometimes there’s three inmates to a cell and these pods are beyond the capacity of holding the inmates in a safe manner. The Minister has indicated that they feel that they have the capacity, but...