Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Chairman, on the debt repayment, I might be not too sure about the question here. In terms of the housing rental in our communities in terms of our debt, is this the place to ask questions on rental collections or is this a whole other issue with the federal government in terms of social housing in terms of debt repayment?

Mr. Speaker, this morning I had the opportunity, along with a constituent of mine, to visit the Stanton Hospital as one of our elderly people was brought in from the region to receive medical care at this hospital. This elderly lady is in her 90s and I’ve watched these dedicated staff up there, the nurses, take care of her. As she was lying there -- me and my constituent were talking -- I had a vision there in the hospital, Mr. Speaker, in terms of wouldn’t it be nice if we had this type of facility in the Sahtu where we could bring our elderly people into the Sahtu region rather than fly all...

Mr. Chairman, the issue of units I have talked about in my region. I guess you need to upgrade some of the units. Just on this issue here, power, heating; some of the units, when you go into them you can see a half an inch to a quarter inch, you can see light under the door when you close the door. One of the complaints is you still have to pay for the power that they use to heat their houses and that. I think the Minister knows this type of issue follows in our communities. I guess those units need to be fixed up. I am going to ask the Minister about working with the tenants. They are...

Mr. Chair, is it possible to get a copy of these 500 units that they administrate across the Northwest Territories? Because certainly I would be interested in asking further questions on this. Certainly in some of my communities people aren’t making any profits, so I don’t know if they would be qualified under that. This here, in terms of the funding, it seems like it’s been a...I don’t know. I’ll wait until I make my conclusion, but I need to see some more information as to this funding here for the 500 units.

It’s good news. I don’t know what they’ve done but it seems to have been brought up. I guess historically the LHOs in my region -- and I could be wrong on this one here -- collected up to 90 percent of the collections and this still has an impact. In regard to the funding, I’ll have to wait and see, I guess, for another couple of years to see where it will go but...I’ll wait a couple more months to see the numbers but this is what I’ve been asked to say on behalf of the people in my community on this issue. They are quite concerned. The Minister has said that it’s going back up again so...I’d...

Mr. Chair, including this program here, so this program was somewhere in your new design of the funding that this program will be included as part of the criteria, requirements that when this issue comes up that the Housing Corporation will be able to satisfy, say yes, we can deal with this in this area. Thank you.

Thank you. Then with the amount of time that I have here, Mr. Chairman, would the Minister look at this amount of dollars per senior and direct his regional office to look at proposals from communities to say we want this contract for the seniors? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thought about this and am going to remain with my previous comments to this discussion that we had, that I am not going to be supporting this motion.

I wanted to see what the Minister has in terms of the seniors maintenance program. I know this program is out there and seniors can tap into it. There are already policies and regulations set in place. Would the Minister look at having this reviewed and see if there’s a possibility of having the corporation, band council, development corporation or a person in the community that they feel comfortable with will dedicate 100 percent of his time, the corporation’s time, to look after the seniors who are in homes and be sort of like their only sole client. That way, we could give some comfort to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to also ask the Premier when all the chiefs of the Northwest Territories gather and if they are going to draft a motion in terms of having some serious discussions on constitutional reform, there’s land claims settlements, there’s self-government settlements negotiated, that the Premier takes the motion very seriously for our people back in our communities who are represented by the leadership of the chiefs here in terms of bringing forward to, like Mrs. Groenewegen has indicated, the Assembly so we can have discussions. These are our chiefs that are speaking...