Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of the Housing Corporation. Over the last number of months and years, actually years, I received a number of complaints and inquiries from constituents who have secured employment recently and already live in social housing units, or from constituents who have jobs and only recently managed to get a social housing unit. Many are single people just starting out, single parents or families with young children. The problem is that as soon as they get a job or those who have jobs move into social housing, they are assessed the maximum rent...

Mr. Chairman, dare I say that this policy here will be coming shortly for the community in terms of the value at risk preparing for the upcoming season here in terms of having a look at this. Mr. Chairman, one time in my life I did fight fires for four seasons with the old federal government program and, when the GNWT took over for them, I was still a firefighter. I know that when there were fires that were initiated by either lightning or man-made, we were out there to put it out right away. Slowly we moved away from that. I am happy to hear that the Minister is looking at this important...

I do want to let the Minister know we do appreciate the support he’s given in the past to some of the elders on other issues in terms of traditional knowledge. They have come forward and I’m not too sure how to take this in terms of engaging the elders on traditional knowledge. So I’m asking more specifically in terms of the Sahtu elders such as the ones in Colville, Fort Good Hope and Deline, they have expressed clearly to me, as in Tulita also, that they want to get together. These are the elders that have used the land and they know about the land and they want to talk about the climate...

The Minister has listed off some very impressive initiatives that I fully support going forward. Would he consider maybe if, say for example, a community or a corporation wanted to deal with the vehicles issues. Would he look at a proposal where the community can work on arrangements to bring in some machine like this? Because, you know, we’re limited funds and he’s got a whole lot of good issues that he’s going to be tackling, and if these vehicles would be… If this type of a situation is on the list, I don’t know if there’s enough time in the life of this government to implement such a...

On the question of the interim resource management systems program agreement, we don’t show that we are going to have resources. Is this due to the limited funding of this or just the agreement ran out here? I say it because the description shows the importance of aboriginal communities on settled land claim areas and participating in land and resource management process affecting their surrounding land use areas. I know that we have been dealing with the caribou issue here. This is kind of an important issue. I don’t see any funding towards this. I just want to ask the Minister for an...

Mr. Chairman, I am from the old school of learning in terms of the traditional law that is being spoken to us by people in the communities, the elders. You start to see reports back that what I did in Fort Good Hope in terms of the fish and the affects of the chemicals coming into the water here, I do look forward to seeing when we have a final document in terms of the transboundary agreements with the provinces. It still doesn’t answer my question in terms of the debris that is coming down into the Athabasca into the Slave into the Great Slave Lake which will eventually flow into the...

Fair enough. Certainly with the impact of the ice roads and roads that go to the mines, they have up to 12,000 loads per year. If you do the calculations that are six minutes apart going right through prime caribou land. You have three megaprojects such as the diamond mines where there’s development and work that they’re doing there to extract the diamonds out for their own purposes. Then you have the hunting issues with 11 outfitters that have the commercial hunt there. Just on hunting itself being open to other residents around the North Slave region, that’s quite an impact on the herd. Then...

With the funding to the Arctic Energy Alliance, I know that this program is very popular in my region. With this funding here, is the Arctic Energy Alliance going to be going into the regions to start training people to do some of the regional work rather than headquarters coming in all the time and being booked and just don’t have enough time and people saying they don’t stay around long enough to do… There are lots of houses in the community that want to take advantage of this program. Is that something that this is going to be looked at by the government and the Arctic Energy Alliance?

One question I have is on the lottery licence. The majority of the funding going into these sports field in terms of the funds that we raise through the lottery licence and the dollars that the majority go to support multisport across the North.

Mr. Speaker, I will be in support of this motion also. It’s something that in the Sahtu region we have long hoped for from this government here in terms of seeing improved services and other services that other communities have in facilities and good programs.

I know we’ve been asked by the Sahtu on many occasions to see if there are ways to bring elders home from Yellowknife, Fort Simpson, or Inuvik back to their region, back to their homes. I know there are many elders that are in various programs in the Northwest Territories that deserve our utmost attention and support to see if we can give...