Norman Yakeleya

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

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...

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. Speaker. I talked about the equality and inequality of residents of the Northwest Territories under the public government system. Sometimes we come to a point in our discussions where we have the have and have-nots, especially in larger centres and smaller communities, in terms of access to health care or education or just the cost of living.

I want to ask the Premier how we can in this government, in our last year, bring some of this equality up so that all people in the Northwest Territories will be treated fairly under our system in terms of programs, services and the equality...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to in the next 15 days advocate for the people in the Sahtu in terms of the equality of programs and services that this government here provides to residents in the Northwest Territories under our public governance system.

When I was in Norman Wells on a constituency visit I realized that 10 pounds of flour at the Northern Store ran about $37. People asked me to pick up some flour here in Yellowknife, which is about $10 or so for 10 pounds.

The inequality of this that we face in the Sahtu every day in terms of education because of the small communities that we...

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...