Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Chairman, the other issue I wanted to focus on is the Norman Wells Airport building. Mr. Chairman, it is my understanding that the building is going to make some changes in terms of accommodating some of the people that have to fly into Norman Wells to catch the Canadian North flight south to Edmonton or to here for medical reasons. Sometimes when we have patients coming in earlier during the day, they have to stay three or four hours at the airport because they are unable to get to town or just some people are left at the airport. One of the things that we looked at was to see if we can...

I wasn’t aware that Cooper had made the attempt to look at a regular service schedule, on demand, and...(inaudible)...maybe unfeasible and the community, the region, I’ll have to go back and check and see if it’s something that they want me to continue to push from this government here to say we want to look at this. Maybe the department may not want... I mean, a lot of things that we don’t want them to do they still do. So we have to have a little bit of flexibility there in terms of what we’re asking for. I will just leave it at that and I will do some of my own checking and my own research...

Thank you. I certainly appreciate the Minister’s openness in terms of a community willing to possibly put forward a proposal should they still have an interest in it. I would like to thank the Minister on that.

One issue I wanted to talk about within the time frame I have is the climate change. I asked the community of Colville Lake, especially when I met with the elders in Colville Lake -- there was about 12 of them that I met with -- and one of the important things that the elders in Colville Lake talked to me about was the climate, the weather and the changing of the weather. They were very...

Mr. Chairman, the one issue... Actually, there are two. The one I want to talk to the Minister about is the contaminated hazardous sites and solid hazardous waste management. I did send a note over to the Minister a couple days ago about the issue of old vehicles in our communities and if there’s a possibility of this department looking at a plan for how to get rid of these old vehicles. I know they have some type of machine that can eat up these old vehicles and put them into scrap metal and take them out on barges. I know this was an issue with the community of Deline. They asked if I would...

Mr. Chairman, the other issue I want to look at is with the land use planning in terms of the draft and the Sahtu is going through their process of the land use plans and they are looking forward to seeing a finalized and signed document so that oil companies and oil and gas companies, mining companies and other potential developers could have a plan we can all follow. People in the region are looking forward to it. How soon can we see a land use plan from the Sahtu region being finished? Do any other regions also have land use plans that are looking forward to being completed? When can we...

The Minister is correct that there is no management plan in this area for caribou. Whether it’s the Bathurst or Ahiak, there’s just no plan at all for caribou. Except we’re waiting for the Wekeezhii Renewable Resources Board to come forward and make a decision. I’ve seen the joint proposal. I think it’s a really good joint proposal. I think it’s something that’s really workable. However, in saying that, I still have difficulty defining the Bluenose-East, West, Bathurst, Ahiak caribou. I know the difference in Woodland caribou in the Mackenzie Mountains because they’re pretty big. Has the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to talk to the issue here, the first one being the land and water management, more specific to the water management with the transboundary agreements that are being discussed with the governments and other governments here and the amount of I call it in our language, poison, this fluid coming down the south part of this Territory in the Slave River into the Slave Lake and down the Mackenzie River. I think I want to ask if there are any types of strong monitoring and provisions in place that we could monitor the effects of the chemicals coming down. I want to ask...

The issue here that’s before us and we have dealt with this in a number of areas, I wanted to ask about the Bathurst caribou regarding initiatives in terms of monitoring this herd in this specific area and the ban of this herd in this area. I wanted to ask the Minister about the monitoring efforts. I heard on the radio that there are wildlife officers out there, community members are out there working for ENR. I guess myself in looking at this issue, the question is how is it that we had over 100,000 caribou and then four years later we have only tens of thousands of caribou? Is there any idea...

Just on the increase of active positions from 187 to 194. Could the Minister elaborate a little bit on the increase?

The other question I have, Mr. Chair, is on the contribution. We have actuals of $46,000, but we haven’t budgeted anything this year. Are we expecting some dollars on that or what is this contribution various to support natural resources and the environmental issues?