Norman Yakeleya

I appreciate that. Is this person able to help the communities, and I’m looking mostly at Fort Good Hope and maybe even Tulita, as to translating the language of a licence like Imperial Oil with all the chemicals and scientific jargon and technical wording into plain English so our people can understand what Imperial Oil is reporting? They do give a report but it’s a very highly technical, engineering, scientific report so we need a person that then can translate, saying this is what they’re saying, these are the chemicals that Imperial Oil is using, this is what’s been processed through the...

I’m so happy, Madam Chair, because I know the people in Fort Good Hope will be happy because, again, the application by Imperial Oil is to take out billions of litres of water and use it for their operations and half of those billions are going back into the Mackenzie River and flowing down towards Fort Good Hope and Tsiigehtchic and down to the Arctic Ocean. So this person is going to be a key person to work with the community of Fort Good Hope.

My understanding again, and I appreciate the Minister’s response, is this person then going to be available to help the residents of Fort Good Hope...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe people who are in the Sahtu or people who are planning to go up to the Sahtu appreciate what the Minister is saying in this House this afternoon.

I want to also thank the Minister and to follow up on his commitment on a preconstruction meeting for next year.

Is the Minister also going to seek the opinion of one of the users as Bassett Petroleum operators and see if they can be a part of that preconstruction discussion as to the conditions of our winter roads? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In the Department of Transportation, one of their objectives is safety on our highways. Certainly that applies more so with the winter roads in our communities.

As part of the Safety Program in the Department of Transportation, are there any requests or consideration for additional maintenance on our winter roads? We have about a month and six days left if the weather holds out to have our winter roads still in operation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our winter roads can only last for three months and then they close down. I want to ask the Minister, given his assessment and the questions that we’ve been exchanging today and looking at this on a going-forward basis, can the Minister commit that next year we can have some type of pre-meeting with all the communities, contractors and operators and look at our winter roads and have a thorough discussion? We are still dealing with these issues from the past and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better, especially now that we don’t have additional funding from industry...

For example, from Norman Wells to Fort Good Hope is 147 kilometres. It is taking people four and a half to five hours to drive that section at 20 kilometres an hour. Compare that to other highways in the Northwest Territories, it’s ludicrous. You would not stand for it.

What is the Minister doing to either increase the maintenance or start the Arctic paving program and putting water on our roads so that our vehicles do not rattle apart and are not held by duct tape to get on the Sahtu winter roads?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the Government of the Northwest Territories did a needs assessment in the Sahtu region, the number one issue with the results of that assessment was the literacy skills of our young students either in school or who have finished school.

What is the Minister doing, what is this department doing to improve the literacy in our small communities in the schools that can show great results by giving some resources to the teachers? Thank you.

That’s something to maybe take a look at when renewing their licence is that these things are checked off. Certainly, we want to encourage them. We want to encourage everybody. Some people don’t do something unless it’s typically as a requirement as to an operating licence. With the resources that we have, some of these operators are using our resources for the fire sprinklers around their operation. It’s something that I would be interested to see, if that could be part of the review of their whole fire situation. Did we use a lot of our own fire sprinklers for tourism outfitters in the area...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to give a shout out to the 8,350 students in the Northwest Territories and the 49 schools across the North and the 800 educators in the 33 communities in the eight regions. That was from a newsletter that I received this morning. Thank you, Minister Lafferty, for sending that over to us.

I also want to say a special congratulations and support to the 62 teachers in the Sahtu region who are working with our students and making a difference in the lives of the students.

At the same time, I was reading a quote from an Ojibway elder, Mr. Jimmy Jackson. Mr. Jackson said...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m going to first of all say to the Minister and the staff that there were a lot of really concerned people last year because of the fires that happened in the south part of the Northwest Territories and the situation that called for additional dollars and resources to be used in the North to fight the fires.

So, my first point and my first comment is the ability of having well-qualified firefighters prepared and ready for any situation that might be in a similar situation as last year. I want to ask the Minister if he’s looking at the firefighters training program this...