Norman Yakeleya

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...

Thank you. I’ll wait until the Minister gets the information back to me.

Thank you. Can the Minister provide to me and the House in terms of types of specifically cultural programs that could be used in our small communities which are primarily in my region, primarily Aboriginal communities in regard to how to deal with these types of issues and if there are ways that they involve elders through the languages?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to talk about how badly we need our youth in the Northwest Territories today to stay alive. Mr. Speaker, it’s very hard in our small communities, and I’m pleading right now to the youth in the Northwest Territories. There are families right now in the North that are dealing with issues of suicide, family violence, drugs and alcohol and with our youth. There are families right now that need help and our youth are so valuable and they’re bombarded with so many issues.

Mr. Speaker, I had to deal with one in Colville Lake and I’m asking the youth how hard sometimes...

Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate that from the Minister. I know that another area that I need to talk about and because this is an operation and maintenance budget, I have...(inaudible)...in terms of at least the planning of the operations and maintenance. Anyhow, I won’t get into the details.

I want to tell the Minister that if they had a hospital or services that I saw firsthand in Edmonton... I appreciate the Territories have a staff person at our hospital. She was very helpful with some of the stuff I had to deal with. It sure does make a big difference when you are out looking at...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to say to the Minister, in terms of the health care services in our small communities and some of the equipment that I’ve seen, now it certainly shows that there’s a great improvement to the health centres. There’s actually some equipment there that’s beneficial to the people and their residents. I really want to thank the Minister for putting those in our communities. It makes a big difference when we have people come to our health centres on an emergency basis and there’s actually equipment there that’s being used by our nurses now. They’re very appreciative of...

Mr. Chairman, I want to ask the Minister regarding the change of the health benefits programs that we’re administering. I know that puts a lot of pressure onto our financial pocket here in the GNWT in terms of how that rolls out. I want to ask the Minister about the challenges that we’re going to see changing the program and if that puts any constraint onto some of the programs we want to see in our communities or resources in our communities such as the community of Colville Lake having a nurse there or having a social worker there. We just seem to be operating on the accessibility from Fort...