Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Chair, I apologize. I will stick to the highways. Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask in terms of the safety operations on the winter road. The Minister has made comments to the safety of the Mackenzie.

Mr. Chairman, just in closing, these numbers don’t work for us. Certainly, they work against us in terms of the cost-benefit analysis, P3 and the revenue and putting up a huge infrastructure such as the Mackenzie Valley Highway. You know, unless we have a real kind heart down in Ottawa that says we’ll give you a certain amount, billions of dollars, to build this Mackenzie Valley Highway, I think we have to move beyond this type of thinking. It has to be a political move in lining up with the northern agenda of this government, in terms of sovereignty, in terms of a whole bunch of other things...

The project description discussions, I would say, with the G’asho Got’ine, the Fort Good Hope and Colville Lake district, I believe that later on when I meet with the leaders tonight, I know they had some discussion around this area. They’re very confident that this government here is going to come to a conclusion and sign off a deal. They’re just wondering about... I guess they have to come to agreement on the numbers that they’re using right now. I feel that could be within a matter of days that they will come to an agreement.

My point is that the Minister has given a lot of support to the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a few questions on the infrastructure on highways. Can we go back to that page?

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...

The approach to the Mackenzie Valley Highway has been long discussed within these Assemblies and the people down the Mackenzie Valley. Certainly we recognize that the federal government will play a huge part in terms of constructing this road here. I look forward to the day when this government and this Minister can bring forward a P3 discussion or we can have some discussions as to the possibilities out there in terms of building part of the Mackenzie Valley Highway. We have yet to see a P3 discussion or paper in front of this Legislative Assembly to look at infrastructure such as this. So we...