Norman Yakeleya

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

---Unanimous consent granted

Can the Minister inform the House as to when some of these changes could come to light in terms of sharing the CHAP funding program with the communities?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Finance. Sorry, the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources.

This past summer the Minister and I toured the Sahtu region and we met with the members of the communities of the Sahtu. We heard from the communities in terms of support for the hunters, the trappers, the harvesters on the land and that the high cost of living in the Sahtu is something that is quite a concern for us. More importantly, the high cost of pursuing their traditional activities in terms of eating wild food from the land.

I want to ask the Minister, in these...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In terms of the outline that the Minister has informed the House, how soon after that discussion will we know if it’s a positive discussion or positive outcome that the communities will know that they will be eligible for some of these support dollars that they desperately need to continue on with the harvesting of their traditional foods?

In terms of one of the programs the Minister talked about, the Community Harvesting Assistance Program to support traditional hunts, I know from the reports I’ve been getting from the Sahtu in the last month that there’s been a huge increase in interest of hunters going out and pursuing this activity with their children and families. As you know, there’s a high number of families with less than $30,000 of income.

I want to ask the Minister, in terms of the high cost of living and the uniqueness of dealing with the situation in the Sahtu, is this type of funding going to be looked at in terms of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday I listened to the Premier, and in his sessional statement he talked about the Northwest Territories and he made reference to the Assembly goals that we were going to try to achieve through this Assembly. He mentioned two of them: healthy, educated people and one of the other goals was an environment that will sustain the present and future generations of our people.

Mr. Speaker, I fully support these goals, but how do we get to them? Well, there is a means that we can achieve them. Mr. Speaker, by doing some research from the NWT Bureau of Statistics, it shows...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Ministers’ statements, I’m just going to summarize my comments to them on their statements.

Certainly with this legislation, the 16th, we have presently said we’ve spent close to just over $1 billion on infrastructure. That’s quite impressive. Yet when you still look at the infrastructure in the Northwest Territories, that’s still not enough to our assets in our communities. It’s a matter of allocating. Like Mr. Ramsay said, some you win and some you lose and some of the infrastructure that gets placed on the capital plans for discussion for approval.

I’m really...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, I’ll get onto the other issue later on, the devolution and resource revenue sharing, but I want to talk about protection from this government in terms of the equality of services in our smaller communities. For example, Mr. Speaker, some of the communities do not have banking services. They only have the Northern Store or the Co-op store and when communities want to cash cheques, they’re charged an enormous fee to cash a cheque, which I don’t think they have those fees in Yellowknife or any other larger centres where there are banking services.

I wanted to ask the...

Mr. Speaker, certainly the Premier is correct in terms of some of the history of the Sahtu becoming its own region in terms of wanting independence in terms of coming into the realm of the system of government here. I want to ask the Premier in terms of the programs and services in the NWT.

We know that the Northwest Territories has 10 communities without RCMP services, just the access to that type of safety in our communities. Is his Cabinet and government going to allocate or look at simple, basic safety enforcement in our communities such as Colville Lake and other communities that do not...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, a well-respected elder, Charlie Tobac from Fort Good Hope, passed away on July 10, 2010. Charlie was known as a strong believer in the Dene culture and healing traditions, as well as a strong voice for the Dene people on issues such as the proposed Mackenzie Valley Natural Gas Pipeline and, more importantly, learning the traditional values of Dene. On behalf of the Sahtu region constituents, we send our thoughts and our prayers to the Tobac family. Mahsi cho.