Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Would the Minister look at future planning to implement strong bush camps in the Northwest Territories rather than continuing pouring dollars into a concrete facility that just seems to recycle our people over and over again and nothing is changing? Would the Minister look at implementing some strong bush camps that would possibly help the justice system?

Some time ago I understood the number to be around $90,000 per inmate per year. I’m not too sure how much that has changed. The reason I ask this is I want to ask the Minister about the number of inmates at the North Slave Correctional Centre, the population there.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister if he could share what type of arrangements or what type of barriers that Grande Prairie has put up in terms of not helping the student to get to the North to do her practicum. What are some situations that his department is looking into?

When these students enter into post-secondary institutions and take on the career of a teacher or teacher’s assistant, has the department notified the students ahead of time about their practicum and the requirements we need? To also let them know ahead of time that it’s not possible to come back to the North to do their practicum, such as this student in Grande Prairie that was disappointed that these things couldn’t be worked out ahead of time? Can the Minister notify me if these things are told to students entering into the teaching professions?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to ask the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment about the practicum issue I talked about. I want to ask the Minister if there are any ways he’s working to arrange for students in the Northwest Territories to come back to the Territories to do their practicum once they complete their courses in southern educational institutions.

Again, I’d like to ask the Minister about medical travel. I understand that the department will be reviewing its Medical Travel Policy and I myself being personally involved in medical travel in the Northwest Territories, look forward to having some meaningful discussions with the Minister and the staff about my own experience with medical travel. I won’t take up the time now to talk about it, but at a different time in terms of how medical has been with me at least and my family and I’m not very happy with it. I don’t need to say any more right now, but I wanted to have the opportunity to...

I look forward to the report the Minister is going to release.

I want to ask the Minister about this budget line item on medical travel. In the 2010-11 revised estimates, there’s $19 million. In the 2011-12 main estimates, it’s $15 million. I want to ask the Minister what justified the lowering of that number? What happened there?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Premier tell me as to why the AIP wasn’t released earlier in terms of letting the people understand and read it, rather than being posted on the CBC website? Just recently it was released to the public.

Thank you. I guess there are the various figments to the history of the bilateral agreements and negotiations. So I’ll leave it at that.

What I’ve been hearing is that the Aboriginal governments that are not signatory yet to this agreement have some questions and they want to assess and analyze the agreement. My understanding is that if we have some of the Aboriginal governments come on side, then that puts them into some funding arrangements. If they do not come on side to sign the AIP, then there’s no funding available to them. Is that a true statement to the Premier?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I will speak about the devolution agreement and the impact on my people and our land claim. Mr. Speaker, the Premier and the federal government signed this AIP without the majority of the Aboriginal governments. How did we justify this action? Yet the Premier has said, come be a partner in building our future together. How can the Premier say come to the table when only after you signed?

Mr. Speaker, I believe the signing of this agreement was rushed. For reasons unknown to me -- I can only speculate -- the AIP was signed without 75 percent of the Aboriginal...