David Krutko

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on my statement earlier, the main estimate in regards to managing wildlife in the Northwest Territories is no longer the Government of the Northwest Territories. It is the Wildlife Boards which have been established under land claim agreements. For those areas where there are no land claim agreements, they still have the right under National Resources Agreements with Ottawa to ensure their fundamental rights are there.

Mr. Speaker, I also want to follow up on questions from my colleague Mr. Menicoche. He mentioned certain sections. Is there a specific...

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, colleagues. An issue that has come to my attention, especially for residents out of Inuvik and the Beaufort-Delta region, apparently they won’t have an orthodontist in Inuvik. Apparently there are a lot of children who require dental care, braces and whatnot. Without having an orthodontist in the region, a lot of them are having to expend a lot of their own dollars to fly their children to Yellowknife so that they can be seen by an orthodontist here in Yellowknife. As a department which is responsible for primary care, especially in the different regions...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The reason I am making this motion is, like I stated, this issue has come up year after year. It has come up at assemblies, it has come up in this House and I basically feel that this government has an obligation to provide secure services for communities. Among the essential services we depend on is health care and I think that we, as government, have to find ways of ensuring that those services are being provided fully, not part time or basically provided at random because of breakup and freeze-up.

I, for one, feel that this issue is almost touching on the grounds of...

It doesn’t seem like I am getting anywhere with this Minister, so I might as well just move a motion and get it over with and see where it is at. Mr. Chairman, I would like to move a motion.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Northwest Territories government has been looking at the so-called ATCO proposal. Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions between the Premier, the Minister of Finance and Nancy Southern of ATCO.

Mr. Speaker, with regard to assets this government owns, in excess of almost $200 million, it’s one of the largest assets this government has been able to retain after division. Mr. Speaker, the asset is owned not only by the Government of the Northwest Territories but the people of the Northwest Territories, which was transferred back in 1988 from the federal...

Okay, I’ll clarify. The lack of services to the residents of Tsiigehtchic, that should be about as precise as you can get to the type of service that they get, which is minimal compared to what other larger communities receive and I think it’s the service that we’re talking about here. I think that health care is a right in regards to the Canadian Health Act in which people have to be prescribed health care and that’s what we get the money for from the federal government. I think if we’re going to start determining service on basically some model in regard to the size of a community, the...

Mr. Elkin.

General comments. What is the wish of the committee? Detail. Okay, if we can turn to page 8-8, or page 8-7, we will defer that to deal with page 8. So with that we’ll defer page 8-7 and then once we conclude the department, then we’ll come back to conclude department summary. Is the committee agreed?