Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Stanton Territorial Hospital serves about 65 percent of aboriginal patients. I want to ask the Minister in terms of healthy, good aboriginal foods for the Stanton Hospital for the patients. Has the Minister moved anywhere in regards to having available traditional aboriginal foods for people who come in from the outside and surrounding communities to see if they will have a choice to have traditional foods served to them while they are in recovery?

Just a comment that I wanted to run by the Minister here. Mr. Chair, in the JRP recommendations of 176 recommendations, in there there’s a phrase in there that they use in terms of the Inuvik facility, Inuvik compressor facility that has waste energy. I know there’s a facility that’s being planned close to the community of Tulita. Is this something that this government has looked at as a possibility of tapping into the waste heat energy for the community of Tulita? I know there are some discussions around natural gas conversions into the community once, and if, the pipeline is built into Good...

No, thank you.

Yes, just on that there, in this specific request that’s a pretty broad, general definition, so is there an example that you can give in terms of specific requests that come in for funding?

Thank you. I wouldn’t mind having a list of these 19 people who are paying the maximum rent, because I’ve been hearing that as soon as they get a job in my riding, that the rent goes right up. It discourages people from working and to be in social housing. I know they want to be in these units and hopefully they can apply and be successful in these applications. I have a hard time in this. I’m here to say this is something that seems like it’s not taken very seriously by the departments here.

I’d like to know how we look at this issue. Can I get a list of the 19 tenants?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Would it be possible to, and I don’t see it here, so would it be possible to ask the Minister if he could kindly distribute this policy in terms of how you go about assessing the fire damage and what things are possible, what things may be contentious so that this can be communicated to our harvesters in my regions regarding this policy here. It’s a good policy, Mr. Chair. The one issue I do have and I haven’t talked yet with the Minister so it’s unfair to have a response from him. However, there was a fellow in my community that has asked for compensation when the fire...

I look forward to the review of the rent scale report by the end of this fiscal year. Will the Minister then look at if the discussion should come well within the committees and have some good discussions to look at this problem? Will he come forward with bringing it to Cabinet to implement what recommendations we have that will support families and single parents in small communities?

Thank you, Deputy Minister, in terms of the process that you outlined about consultation with the communities. I look forward to when you come into the regions and having some discussions with the communities that I represent in terms of forest management and the issues that you bring forward on this issue here. I certainly look forward to implementing your strong traditional knowledge policy in terms of having the information, because a couple times I heard during this presentation citing of scientific information and we haven’t yet really satisfied me in terms of some strong traditional...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, people in the Northwest Territories want to know that their government is there for them. People want to know when they are asked to put their names next to the ballots as we ran as MLAs, to be there for them stepping up to the plate and be the voice in this House. People want to be consulted in a meaningful way and know that we are there for them, Mr. Speaker. They want to know that we will bring down the cost of living in the North. Mr. Speaker, the people want to know the traditional way of life will be honoured and that we can exercise that right to...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to talk about the forest management, just something that came up with the discussions I went to at the Explorer Hotel with the people that were invited to the Dene Nation’s open house panel on the caribou. Something that I found interesting was about the forest fires in the particular area that there was a ban on hunting caribou. Something I found interesting was the caribou. One of the factors is that caribou weren’t coming to the area because of the forest fires. They are not going to come around when there’s… Maybe it was Mr. Lafferty... Sorry, it was one of...