Norman Yakeleya

I want to again ask the Minister to challenge the schools. You know, there are people in what the Budget Dialogue talked about, putting hammers and screwdrivers and wrenches into the young hands. You know, there are kids that are very, very intelligent, very smart. You know, just the hard work. So how do we get them into the schools maybe where it’s exciting where they want to be in school? Is there a challenge in the schools that the Minister can challenge the school and say, any schools in the Northwest Territories who have a certain percentage of attendees, you’ll somehow be rewarded with...

In today’s life, students bring with them lots of issues to school. Some of these issues they have they need support on. Is the school now looking at ways to help the children with their emotional and mental issues, so they can have support other than to hold on to them and not deal with them? That sometimes prevents a child from attending school. Is there support for them such as counselling services in our small schools for the kids?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. In my Member’s statement I talked about the quality of education in our small communities, especially with the fact of finding that our students are not at the same level as our southern students on their education.

I want to ask the Minister what he is doing to bring these numbers up so that we know that our students are getting a quality education and that they can bring the level up to a number that we can be proud of.

I’m thinking about the meeting we had last year in Sahtu when we talked about the implementation plan of the Sahtu Land Claim Agreement and some of the work that needed to yet be negotiated and worked on. Out of the number of activities, how many does the federal government yet need to complete? How long will it take for them to complete the implementation plan? I’m hearing that the territorial government is up to date on our implementation plan. I know some dates take a little longer than we anticipated, but what I’m hearing is that we’re okay.

I congratulate the Premier and the staff on the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This morning I was looking at some of the stats that I’ve been compiling, and one of the most frightening stats that I picked up and started to read had to deal with the shocking report that the Department of Education had compiled. It has to do with our future of the Northwest Territories and our small communities, and it’s startling and it’s frightening. I was wondering: how do we work on this and get this to be something that we can celebrate? It has to deal with the results that the consultants found in our children in our small communities.

The results were showing...

Mr. Chair, I just want to understand something from the section here, Sahtu land claim implementation. Under the terms, the territorial government will get funding from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, and Canada will provide a 2015 grant payment to the GNWT to assist the Sahtu implementation activities pursuant to the Sahtu Implementation Plan. Just help me out here. There is one government giving another government money, so then they can help with the implementation of the Sahtu Implementation Plan? Is that normal? Is that what the process is set up to? How many...

The Minister talked about the funding being checked periodically. If this funding happened two years ago, we know that forced growth has happened. We deal with it in our budgets and the Premier talked in his opening about the Native Women’s Council and the Status of Women getting an increase. So, this was two years ago and we’re still at $20,000. As much as the Metis councils appreciate the funding, if you do the breakdown on core funding that we give to the Metis locals, maybe I could do an exercise as to what it really costs and what $20,000 a year for a native political organization that is...

That’s really good news, $20,000. This is our own funding from the territorial government, no flow-through from the feds? This is out of the goodness of our hearts to fund the local Metis $20,000 to have them operate their office like the Status of Women or the Native Women’s Association? Is that the type of funding we’re looking at? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to first of all congratulate the department here for actively taking, as it says in the last bullet, a prominent role on the national front on some very important issues to people in the Northwest Territories and certainly to people in my riding, and that the Government of the Northwest Territories, through the Minister here, is taking on the national spotlight as to the issues that we have to deal with and we have been partners across Canada. I want to say congratulations. Even though we are considered a small government, we carry a big punch sometimes, and that’s...

Mr. Speaker, the Minister and I have had a tour of the Sahtu on this bill, and with the support we had from the Sahtu communities and leadership, we are actually looking forward to seeing this bill come to fruition so that we know we can do some things that are different and beneficial. Right now we are experiencing some difficulties with the health system because of the way our system is set up in the legislation. The Sahtu is very supportive, all the communities that met with the Minister, and so I will be fully supporting this bill.