Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to deal with the motion I gave notice of earlier today.

---Unanimous consent granted

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister has talked about the arrears with our public housing tenants. A lot of our people in those units also are Aboriginal people with Aboriginal languages being their first form of communication. Can the Minister, through the Housing Corporation, talk about how to translate these kind of issues and do they have some form of plan to educate people in their own language? Other than having a non-Aboriginal person come to the community to talk about it, can we have some provisions there where people in the community could be looked at in that process to help educate...

I take this announcement as a golden opportunity to educate people in public housing units with arrears, to look at the responsible side of paying your bills and look at some of the consequences of not paying them. Some of the tenants that we have are fairly young. They think that whatever you damage or break in these units, windows and that, that the government will be there automatically to fix these places. What about the people – I just want to confirm – who are not being responsible for their units, through partying or damages? Will they be part of the evictions as the Minister has stated...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was very pleased to hear the Minister responsible for the NWT Housing Corporation announce a freeze on the evictions for public housing tenants who have arrears. I wanted to ask the Minister when will this policy come into effect and what steps will the people who have arrears have to take to address them between now and April 2012.

I want to thank the Minister and this government for a good Christmas present for the people in the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to deal with the motion that I gave notice of earlier today.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to say to the Premier that I look forward to the humanistic possibilities of what he can do to come into our small communities. I look forward to his position when we ask that question again, either in the halls or in the office or he can come and visit me also.

If we were to work together in consensus building and collaboration, I like what the Premier said to develop guidelines. It’s very easy to go to one location and spend two or three days there. There are communities that only have one location to go to. In Yellowknife you can walk around the blocks. You have the Ministers all living here. That’s where we get the issue of small communities and larger centres. If there are two or three communities you can hit, fine, but sit down and let’s talk about it. There are how many communities you can visit a year? Well, that’s something that I’d like to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just for clarification, I’m asking about our own staffing, I’m not asking about the federal staffing. That is the post-evolution and post-impact agreement. I’m asking about our people, how we’re going to get our people here working with us as an independent office, or an office that we could use in Ottawa.

Certainly, I hope that the Cabinet or the Premier is looking at some guidelines, because that’s how the system works.

I know when I was the chief negotiator, again, that the Treasury Board gave us a guideline and this is the amount, this is the agreement, you reach it and when you get there, you go to your people and ask if you want to accept the deal or not. The other part of it goes into implementation.

Would the Premier look at, with the Aboriginal governments, a timeline. I heard it from your other Cabinet Ministers that the amount of money that’s leaving the Northwest Territories, there’s...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My line of questioning is with the Aboriginal government that we had this historic meeting last Friday, and also that the biggest issue, I guess, on the people’s minds is the working relationship and the Devolution and Resource Revenue Sharing Agreement that was signed in the 16th, and the time frame to conclude that agreement with the federal government.

This territorial government indicated that Members had talked about the amount of dollars that are leaving the North. They talked about the control being yet in Ottawa, with some still staying in the Northwest...