Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I was listening to the issues of board reform and the information that’s been provided to me about board reform I was thinking about a time when in the Sahtu region we had something like a board reform. Finally, after many years of good politicking and the leaders in the House Assembly, this Assembly here, we finally have an educational divisional board. Several years ago we had a health board. Now we have a district office of the housing authority in the Sahtu region and we are just getting used to having this kind of authority in our region. Now this government is...

Thank you. I have three questions for the Minister. The first question to the Minister is, he was responding to a Member here in terms of the core need, and he is correct on the 76 percent of core need in Colville Lake. He is very correct on that. The information I have is from the 2004 percentage. Deline is 41.7 percent, Fort Good Hope is 46.9 percent, Norman Wells is 8.5 percent, Tulita 35.7 percent. This is the information I received for 2004. With the funding that the Minister will be receiving on behalf of the territorial government to look at our housing across the Northwest Territories...

Mr. Chairman, under the corporate summary, in terms of municipalities and bands, the Minister had mentioned in terms of the unique challenges in some of our smaller bands and some of our charter communities or some of the hamlets or municipalities for the land. Has the Crown corporation designed a protocol with working with lands, band issues or municipalities? This came up in a discussion with the Fort Good Hope Charter Community that wanted to have some discussions with the corporation in terms of lands that are available and being worked on in the communities. I will ask the question in...

Mr. Speaker, I, too, would add my comments to the motion here. In our pursuit of looking for efficiencies in the Government of the Northwest Territories as stated in the 16th Assembly, certainly in terms of efficiencies, it has to do with the interpretation as efficiencies. When you look at the efficiencies of the government, certainly we all strive to see where we can do better.

In terms of the interpretation of efficiencies with this government, if you look at, for example, the McDonald’s restaurant. They’re pretty efficient in terms of operating their organization and how they serve the...

Mr. Speaker, the Minister has indicated that in April he will have some other discussions. I guess what I’m asking here in terms of building from the community from the bottom up and looking at initiatives here in the Sahtu region. I guess I’m asking in terms of what or how many more red flags does this government need, and this Minister need to say this is a no-go process here, we should be looking at something else other than board reform in terms of it moving forward with this government.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Minister has alluded to, the Health and Social Services budget I know the majority of funding where it’s spent. We all just check the records where this money is spent in terms of funding for health and social services issues. I would ask the Minister in terms of this reform initiative here, in terms of going forward here, that the Minister has talked with the self-government negotiating tables in our communities in terms of what is it that he’s trying to do. We are trying to get power back to the people to make decisions in our communities for our people. This...

I would like to ask the Minister, the Tulita Housing Corporation said no, the Fort Good Hope community says no, the Sahtu Regional Health Board and education board have said no. What part of “no” on this board reform does the Minister not understand? The people in the Sahtu do not want…

---Applause

I ask the Minister what it will take for this House here to tell the Minister to cease and desist on the health board initiatives from the Sahtu people. What will it take?

In closing, the people in the Sahtu agree with the Members here that board reform needs to be stopped and really looked at. Otherwise, this government here is going to feel the wrath of the Sahtu people.

I certainly look forward to the new numbers that the Minister indicated. That will be coming out sometime this year in terms of core needs that I am using the 2004 needs, so it might not be too fair to the Minister and his department, but I think those numbers pretty well reflect the needs in the community. It is not fair to the Minister to give a proper answer until he sees the new numbers that are coming out this year and I look forward to that.

Mr. Chairman, the seniors facilities, and I am going to make another pitch for the seniors facilities in our communities that meet the needs. With...

The strategies that are going to be coming forward certainly would possibly help the communities, I guess. Mr. Chair, I would like to ask in terms of the issues here we are just discussing. I am not quite fully briefed as to the issues in the community of Fort Good Hope because it wasn’t given to me over the phone. Basically the request was to look at land issues in Fort Good Hope with the Housing Corporation. I am hoping that this corporation here with the Minister is flexible enough to look at issues such as Fort Good Hope in terms of the issues that they need to resolve to build units in...