Norman Yakeleya

I have one short question, Mr. Chair. I want to ask, given the situation in the North here, and specifically the Sahtu region, are the partnership meetings that are happening in our region in the Sahtu that involve various departments still active and they’re still making suggestions and recommendations with the government, oil companies and the communities and making some progress in the work that could be done and what work can be looked at and making plans for just in case the industry does come back on a large scale or a small scale?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments would be more reflective of the situation that we have in my riding around the oil and gas. I do want to thank the Minister and the staff for doing the best they can in the situations of our economic opportunity and working with the region. You responded and you’ve done some things that were greatly appreciated in our region. Right now we have Colville Lake with some activity going on there. Hopefully, in the future we’ll have some other work being done around Conoco’s lease in maybe other areas. I do want to say to the Minister and the staff that you’re doing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that, notwithstanding Rule 4, when this House adjourns on Thursday, February 12, 2015, it shall be adjourned until Monday, February 16, 2015;

AND FURTHER, that any time prior to February 16, 2015, if the Speaker is satisfied, after consultation with the Executive Council and members of the Legislative Assembly, that the public interest requires that the House should meet at an earlier time during the adjournment, the Speaker may give notice and thereupon the House shall meet at the time stated in such notice and...

On the winter road from Norman Wells to Fort Good Hope, just before we get to washboard alley there, there’s a bridge that’s sitting there all by itself. So, there are over $1 million in assets sitting there. I want to ask the Minister what is the bridge there for, because it has been sitting there for the last 11 years since I’ve been MLA for the Sahtu. Is that part of the highway decorations, or are we going to use that bridge? What is the government going to do with that bridge?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of Transportation. January 6th to 7th and the 8th, the Minister and I took an afternoon drive to the Sahtu communities of Tulita and Fort Good Hope. There were a lot of complaints from the residents. We went through washboard alley and pothole dip valley also. The roads are not quite as smooth as we thought they were, despite the good work of our contractors. A lot of people were asking, where is the water, where’s the water paving program of this department on the Sahtu winter road? I want to ask the Minister what happened this year...

I respect the survivors’ anonymity or the privacy of the survivors, so some of the information in the Northwest Territories, we know how many survivors or how many, say, students are in a school right now without having them consent to releasing that number. I want to ask why it’s so different with the survivors. If there are some survivors in our community, we can do our own. For example, in the Grollier Hall residential school, from the Roman Catholics report there were 2,500 students that went to the Grollier Hall Residential School, the highest amount of survivors in one residential school...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to ask the Minister, has this department ever done an inventory as to the exact number of residential school survivors in the Northwest Territories?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Member’s Statement has to deal with O Canada. Our darkest histories of dealing with Aboriginal people have been a struggle because of the experiences of dealing with the residential schools in Canada. Since the 1800s, Aboriginal people have been subject to injustice in all facets of life.

In the early 1900s, the establishment of residential schools were created in Canada. The goal of these residential schools was to eradicate a nation of people, everything about them. The storm of the residential schools certainly did a good job. They caused a lot of havoc in the...

So, Minister, and Mr. Chair, that’s for all of the Northwest Territories, because we certainly heard it in the budget dialogue that we need revenue, and if you have revenue to do things that we want to do, that will certainly help us.

I just wanted to make a last pitch for the Aboriginal business people in the region, the ones that have the ma and pa type of tourism lodges. You know, we want the best for them. They’ve put sweat and equity into that business and at times it’s quite expensive to bring people out to those lodges, but when they get out to those lodges they sure love the country...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the 2013 Alberta Achievement Tests, they talk about factors that give our smaller communities and larger centres test results. One of the biggest factors that brought our percentage down was the children’s attendance in schools.

I want to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, in order to raise the level of success for our young people, what is the department doing along with education boards in communities to ensure that children go to school, stay in school and bring their grades up? Right now, the biggest factor is children not attending school.