Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before I start my Member’s statement I want to say Happy Valentine’s Day to all of the people out there. Have a heart on this side here.
Mr. Speaker, I want to say the issue that I want to bring up today. Mr. Menicoche, in a statement, talked a little bit about the fish in the Northwest Territories. We are starting to see some chemicals and metals in the fish and we are warning people about eating fish in our wonderful land. People around Great Slave Lake, Hay River, Fort Resolution, Providence, all the way up the Mackenzie River right to Tuktoyaktuk depend on the water. It is in our blood. People who live along the Mackenzie River, the water is in our blood and something is not right. We need to have health centres or monitoring stations to check and see what’s going on, what’s being pumped into our life here. The Mackenzie River, any other water in the North is our life for our people. They depend on it.
We need water, proper water monitoring lab stations in the North. We have only one in Yellowknife, but we need another one along the Mackenzie River. We need to know really the crucial impacts of the tar sands, of pulp mills all coming down out of Fort McMurray and BC.
Our people need to know what type of impacts it’s having on our lives. We depend on water, we depend on the food that it brings and we really don’t yet today have an accurate or true account of what kind of stuff is coming in the water and coming down the Mackenzie River or even the Great Slave Lake. Lives are dependent on it, Mr. Speaker.
I’m asking this government to push for a regional lab along the Mackenzie somewhere so we know, we have an accurate baseline to measure the true impacts of the tar sands, pulp mills and what’s being pumped into the Mackenzie River. Otherwise one of the prophecies of my elders would come true.
I’ll have questions for the Environment Minister at the appropriate time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
