Norman Yakeleya

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...

Mr. Speaker, I have pictures of the potatoes that we had grown in Norman Wells here.

Thank you Mr. Speaker, I take this type of scenario, like Mr. Premier has indicated, as the house. I look inside the house, around the kitchen table and see the father and mother and children there, they are talking and saying, okay, children, father and mother are going to negotiate a deal and whoever wants to sign on can be with us, depending on which side you want to go. This is in my sense that we need to look at the average. I want to ask the Premier in terms of between now and whenever we have a decision made as to sign or not sign, deal or no deal, how are we going to somehow include...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Premier just on the draft AIP in regards to the signatories to the agreement. Right now we have a bilateral. It is the federal government and the territorial government. There are no lines there for any of the aboriginal governments to sign on. I understand that the aboriginal governments can sign on later on. Right now the parameters are being set between the federal government and the territorial government. There are some major issues with the aboriginal governments of being signatories of this. Why are the aboriginal governments not signatories to...

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Minister mentioned in his ministerial statement that there is no reason why we can’t have food produced in the Northwest Territories and sold in grocery stores, hotels and restaurants. Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the Minister in this statement here. I would ask the Minister, in terms of going ahead, in terms of making this a reality, what can the Minister do to advise his department, his council, in terms of making this a reality for the people in the Northwest Territories, people who are paying a high price for groceries in the Sahtu region, so they can certainly...

Good afternoon, Mr. Speaker. My statement is about blood, sweat and good teamwork.

Mr. Speaker, the Sahtu is the most remarkable place. The largest lake, Bear Lake, in Canada, is the first ice hockey game in Canada, the CANOL Trail, and now due to the true grit and determination of a couple of northern farmers, Norman Wells has become the potato capital of the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, it began with some discouraging results: a poor crop of small potatoes last year. Mr. Speaker, that didn’t stop Doug Whiteman, owner of Green Enterprises. With some advice from PEI potato farmers, and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement I talked about phase II of the Bourque Report that was commissioned in the early ‘90s on the constitutional issues in the Northwest Territories. I want to ask the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations if he has any indication from a meeting that was held at the spiritual location, the Trappers Lodge here, on this group going forward with a report to come out asking for a look at phase II of the Bourque Report in the Northwest Territories.