Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Chairman, I do agree with Mr. Ramsay’s comments in terms of the North needing a university. It seems that we have some pressing issues that we need to put together for the Minister. As Mr. Ramsay indicated, there are some things that we should really take this opportunity to press hard with the federal Minister to look at a university in the Northwest Territories for building our case. I hope that we have the opportunity to make a strong case to the federal government.

The Minister alluded to the NWT Day as something that we could do. I think that the North does need a university now, we...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The capital infrastructure for colleges, under the budget there’s minor capital upgrades to various college facilities. I noticed that in Yellowknife Campus or college, a lot of students from the Sahtu have come to go to school here and also they have used their facility to upgrade or attend some of the courses here. Some of them have vehicles, and parking space is very limited around the college campus. Also, winter is coming and they use their vehicles to go back home and they need proper plug-ins or insulation at this campus. I’m not sure what the process is or if the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That’s quite a considerable amount of dollars here in terms of what the Minister has quoted on a five-year plan. I ask because of some of the infrastructure that’s desperately needed in our communities. We are hoping to see them come onto the capital plan in putting some good investment in there. I just wanted to thank the Minister for those numbers and the significance of the type of investment we need in the NWT in terms of our infrastructure within the GNWT.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to ask the Minister in terms of the infrastructure investment, in terms of all of our infrastructure and the amount of investment that we are putting in this capital plan here, in terms of the overall infrastructure with his department. What is the percentage number in terms of our investment? Are we at 10 percent? What percentage, if you have a percentage number? Ideally, we want to invest into our infrastructure, we want to invest, say, 100 percent; however, with the competing departments and dollars for infrastructure, we can only invest 10 percent of the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask the Minister about support for our agencies in the department within the government. In terms of electronic support and infrastructure, I know that there is some interest in electronic infrastructure for our health care operations in our small communities and with the whole accessing more infrastructure for our health centres. I’m not too sure if this is the place where I can ask about this in this department, if this department is heading up looking at putting in stronger infrastructure into our communities that require them, especially for our health...

The time frame for the aboriginal leaders to respond, again I would wait until the end of the month to see. It would have to be on Halloween Day, too, so we’ll see what type of a response we’re going to get.

I want to ask because right now I’m not hearing the aboriginal governments jumping up and down saying “sign here.” I’m hearing different views as to this agreement and it seems that we don’t have much support from the majority of aboriginal governments. I want to ask the Premier again if this is the type of sentiments and feelings out there at the end of the month, would we as the Assembly...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Premier of the Northwest Territories. I want to ask the Premier regarding the draft Devolution and Resource Revenue Sharing Agreement-in-Principle in terms of allowing the people of the Northwest Territories ample time to look at this deal. As has been noted by CBC, parts of the deal are out there. Can we have our constituents in the regions look at this deal to see if it’s something they want to join with the Government of the Northwest Territories to initial at the start of the negotiations? I want to ask the Premier if his Cabinet has considered...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted

Mr. Chairman, the issue that I want to bring up on this part is with the winter roads within the Sahtu in terms of the amount of traffic that potentially could happen this winter, and past winter in terms of the conditions of the roads and the amount of signs that were supposed to be there. Sometimes these signs have a habit of falling off the trees or on the ground. I want to ask the Minister regarding securing more safety devices so this issue is upgraded to more of a standard of road safety measurements of our highways in the North here and give some more attention to the ones in the region...

Mr. Chairman, I want to say to the Minister of Transportation that I wanted to express my appreciation to his staff and work with the communities of Colville Lake, Fort Good Hope and Tulita in terms of the successful completion of the runway extension in Tulita, and working on Colville Lake while it is still in the process, and then working a little more on Fort Good Hope in terms of their runway extension. I wanted to ask the Minister that future working relationships within our region continue and, more specifically, with Deline in that they’re asking about their runway and, of course, there...