Norman Yakeleya

For example, from Norman Wells to Fort Good Hope is 147 kilometres. It is taking people four and a half to five hours to drive that section at 20 kilometres an hour. Compare that to other highways in the Northwest Territories, it’s ludicrous. You would not stand for it.

What is the Minister doing to either increase the maintenance or start the Arctic paving program and putting water on our roads so that our vehicles do not rattle apart and are not held by duct tape to get on the Sahtu winter roads?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I didn’t want to talk too long so I just wrote three lines in my Member’s statement here.

---Laughter

Thank you, gracious colleagues.

This being anti-bullying day, I say to those who are bullying, “Quit it, and have a Snickers bar because it’s not you.”

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My questions have to do with a letter that was sent to the Minister on November 19th. I’m not too sure if the Minister wants to see a copy. It is from the Sahtu Renewable Resources Board, signed by the interim chair of the board, Paul Latour, and Chief Leonard Kenny. It was addressed to the Minister and it talked about the request for the feedback on the issues considering the harvesters for caribou, allocations for the Bluenose-East caribou. In there, they’ve made seven points, addressed seven points of consensus presented to the department, and they want to know the...

I do take that to heart and I do agree with the Minister that they’re very capable people working in various boards and governments and that they can work together. I just wanted to make sure that we have a coordinated approach because we need to know that what’s being tested for in the Mackenzie River and what’s not being tested for is so important. So we need to know for sure that this information comes out in our own language when we explain this to the community. So I’ll take that as a good response from the Minister and I’ll leave it at that and appreciate what he’s telling me this...

Just a short question as to if the Minister can provide me the number of water testing sites, I believe, along the Mackenzie that fall within the jurisdictions of the Sahtu region.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to ask about one position in the Sahtu that deals with the water quality. The application by Imperial Oil and 10-year renewal licence for their operation indicated that they are going to use a lot of water from the Mackenzie River over the 10-year period. The big issue for me is I believe it’s downstream from the Imperial Oil at Fort Good Hope where the quality of water has been questioned. Imperial Oil is using not millions but billions of litres of water that’s going to be used for their operation and they’re going to be pumping a lot of water back into...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Has the department ever come to the point where they do a pilot project such as they’ve done in Inuvik with the TEST program, with students in sports or on-the-land activities within education so these students can develop into world-class athletes? Has there ever been a program since they did theirs in Inuvik with the TEST program? Has there been any thought to that?

I do apologize to the Minister. I was talking about hoping the student would say something that would get them to stay in school or something exciting, but he was looking forward to leaving the school every day. So I want to know what type of programs are in place in the schools, such as sporting events, that make students go to school and stay in school and have their school be a fun place to go to.

Has the Minister looked at any type of program such as sports and the days of the TEST program where there were sporting events that kept students in school and measured their success by also...

Mr. Speaker, it says in the paper, kids are not learning to read and write by Grade 3, and if you don’t learn to read and write by Grade 3, you’re handicapped all the way through. That’s what I’m talking about, and the results show that 50 percent of our small schools are operating below their grade level. We are failing them.

I’m asking the Minister again, is he willing to look at the pilot projects that are done in Ontario to see if these pilot projects can be implemented in our Sahtu communities as a pilot project to improve the literacy skills of our students? Will he be willing to commit...

In the Globe and Mail article it talks about the Aboriginal Literacy Pilot Project that dramatically improved the test scores in Ontario. I wonder if the Minister is aware of this First Nations reserve school in Ontario. It was struggling with the basic literacy test scores, and they have done a pilot project in that community that has greatly improved the results of these test scores for the young students.

Is this something that the Minister would be interested to investigate and to see if this could be done in the Northwest Territories in looking at a pilot project in the Sahtu communities?