Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Minister, I would ask if you would clarify that number for me, please.

The specific phrase on bandwidth support, I’m looking more in the future of increasing that to our health centres in the small communities where they are now starting to have more technology that would have electronic medical records and being more transparent in the health centres to the larger centres where these records are available. Right now I know we still operate with the paper system and I think if there’s some indication from this department on areas they’re going to look at in the health centre on the specific issue of supporting our communities with implementing a health records...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize the diamond in my eye, my beautiful wife, Cheryl. She’s up in the gallery and visiting us today. I love you, babe.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Premier is correct in terms of how he’s waiting for the leadership from the Northwest Territories to determine a go or no go, or a deal or no deal. I want to ask the Premier about what I’ve been hearing from our leadership that doesn’t seem to have much support. What can we do in terms of making sure that we do have a strong, northern aboriginal leadership? We know we want this deal, but right now it seems like there’s not much support, from where I’m standing, about proceeding any further with this draft AIP.

The community does… I won’t get into it because it would take it to another debate; however, I thank the Minister for informing us and hopefully the communities that I represent have a fair chance of looking at some of this funding in its applications.

There are needs other than what we’re talking about within our schools and sometimes you have to decide which ones you want and it’s a priority and there are a lot of things that go on between. However, I look forward to having these facilities in our small communities where our kids can also take pride in going to school and staying in school to...

I say to Mr. Premier, give the people the respect and dignity to have a say in their destiny. Give each resident in the North the opportunity to voice their opinions on this deal.

We must move forward on the path of unity and sometimes this takes time. That’s what we have today: time to know how this deal is going to go down in history to be proud or to be chapters of regrets. I ask the government to take their time on this deal.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I rise to speak about the draft devolution resource revenue sharing deal.

Imagine my surprise that parts of this significant landmark for the Northwest Territories was quoted on CBC last Friday. Imagine, we could be at the very brink of moving closer to a provincial type of government and we don’t know yet 100 percent if all the aboriginal governments are on side with us. Are we going to initial this historical deal with or without them? Is this not a hassle-free approach to becoming a legitimate-sized government? Will this approach leave out the recognitions of...

Certainly the Sahtu has, as Mr. Minister has indicated and listed off, quite an impressive list of projects, and rightly so; it should be. That is the type of attitude we want from this government in terms of the safety of the public. Not just in parts of the Northwest Territories, we also have to look in areas of the whole North where we need to have safety. The Minister himself drove on the winter road, he knows the amount of signs that should be up there, in terms of his inventory, and the Minister knows the conditions of our roads having once been called by myself a goat road and I hope we...

Mr. Chair, I apologize. I will stick to the highways. Mr. Chairman. I wanted to ask in terms of the safety operations on the winter road. The Minister has made comments to the safety of the Mackenzie.

Mr. Chairman, just in closing, these numbers don’t work for us. Certainly, they work against us in terms of the cost-benefit analysis, P3 and the revenue and putting up a huge infrastructure such as the Mackenzie Valley Highway. You know, unless we have a real kind heart down in Ottawa that says we’ll give you a certain amount, billions of dollars, to build this Mackenzie Valley Highway, I think we have to move beyond this type of thinking. It has to be a political move in lining up with the northern agenda of this government, in terms of sovereignty, in terms of a whole bunch of other things...