Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, my comments are going to be specific to the comments I heard from the Minister. Through the discussion of details, I will ask the Minister about some things I’d like to know in detail.

Regarding political development in the Northwest Territories, we have some issues that are pretty sensitive right now to the aboriginal governments in the North here. Here, we try to build a common front for political development to look at some bigger issues on the table regarding resource revenue sharing, devolution, the common vision for people in the Northwest Territories...

No, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just wanted to ask some questions to the Minister of youth. Over the weekend I had the pleasure of watching the hand games. At the hand games they had a lot of youth that were involved in the tournament. I want to ask the Minister of Youth on the involvement of youth more into the hand games, if there is some type of avenue that the communities can take to involve the youth almost on more of a territorial level youth hand games tournament with his staff working with the different organizations in the Sahtu communities.

Mr. Chair, I wanted to ask about probably a brief strategy in terms of devolution negotiations and the participation of the aboriginal organizations. I know there’s got to be a point where you have to agree to the process and I wanted to ask the Premier who is on board and who is not on board as a government going forward to sit with the federal government to look at this big ticket item. It’s a good start, but we’ve got to get going. So we’ve got to sort of get things on the go here and I guess I’m listening for a starting point on where we go from here.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Ramsay asked the question for me.

The last question will be to the Minister regarding his department working with the federal government, Sahtu and Gwich’in on the land access information for companies and people coming into our region. Sometimes they are not aware of the agreement or not interested in looking at how we access our land and they should know. I think there is someone working in this department on land access pamphlets. I will ask the Premier if he can give me an update.

No, thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just in my own region with regard to implementation in the Sahtu Land Claims Agreement, are we... I am hearing we are slow on implementation. I have heard it’s a difficult implementation, from not only us but the federal government. Agreements have been in place for 15 years and we are finally starting to see some implementation here. Are we on par in terms of implementation specific chapters of the Sahtu Land Claims Agreement?

Mr. Chair, I’d like to say that’s good news and I hope we see the bill sooner than later. I wanted to ask the Minister about the uncertainty of some of the initiatives that are happening in the North regarding infrastructure on projects. Does that, from a Minister’s point of view, the department’s point of view, throw some type of wrench into our financial fiscal outlook or framework in terms of what you’ve presented us here? Is it possible that you could be presenting something totally different in two or three months down the road in terms of what you have before us here? Thank you.

Just one question if I can see if I can get a satisfactory answer, then I’ll be done. I wanted to ask the Minister about the negotiations. In the details he had talked about the Northwest Territories realizing the economic potential in the Northwest Territories. Does the Minister have an idea or assessment as to the economic potential in the North right down the whole valley? I know some organizations have put some numbers to it, you know, in the amount of millions or billions. Has this department put some numbers to the potential for economic potential in the North? Thank you, Mr. Chair.