Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement I asked about the on the land program with the Department of Health and Social Services and the Sahtu health board. I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services: would she consider taking this notion to a pilot project in the Sahtu? People in Colville Lake or Délînê or even Fort Good Hope could have such a program, inviting the department to have on the land healing programs for people in need.

I have to reconfirm those facts with my community. I’ll see what their interpretation is or how they got the sense of how this work was progressing in Fort Good Hope, because I certainly have a different opinion hearing from my community in Fort Good Hope. I have to go through that process, and I have to follow through later on in terms of the response I got from the deputy minister.

Mr. Chairman, I want to look at when we have construction like that in our communities. As I said before, sometimes these constructions…. We certainly appreciate it, because it’s needed in the communities. The...

Mr. Chairman, the community of Colville Lake certainly appreciates the portable school that they have and the work that the department is doing. Because it’s fall time now, they want to look at some of the preventative heat loss in terms of having the department supply some skirting around it. Time is of the essence, and they were asking when they can see a certain time frame as to when this project could be implemented in Colville Lake.

Mr. Chairman, as the Minister agreed, there was a real deal at the time that the community wanted an additional gym. It couldn’t get it, because they said they didn’t have the money. It wasn’t budgeted for. If you want the stage for the community, you will have to put in an extra $400,000. Thank God the New Deal came in. That was the real deal to give the community: some money.

The community as a whole between the three organizations, the three governments, said: we want to support education for children; the school needs a gymnasium, a proper gymnasium; we will pay for it; we will help with...

The policy of the small communities committee in terms of its membership as initiated by Cabinet…. I’ll ask the Premier if he has the authority to say that this committee needs to be implemented. Does the Priorities and Planning committee need to initiate it to get it going?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to differ with the Minister in terms of the best people and water rights down here in the Mackenzie River, here in the communities. They live off the water; they know their water.

I would like to ask the Minister about the Mackenzie River being labelled as a sensitive cultural, spiritual heritage site that needs to be protected right down the Mackenzie Valley, because we are at ground zero of all the mega developments that are even on the table right now. I would ask the Minister if he would see that the Mackenzie River gets full — the highest — protection...

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy and very proud when this Assembly is making first commitments to protect the water in the Mackenzie River, and also the 15th Assembly passing the motion saying it’s our right; it’s in our blood down in the Mackenzie Valley.

In terms of protection, I would ask the Minister: would he work very closely with his federal counterparts and the aboriginal groups to have the resources there for the Protected Area Strategy group to implement a critical component of their work in terms of protecting our land and our water in the Mackenzie Valley before development?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the Thanksgiving weekend I spent some time in Fort Providence with my father-in-law, and there we spent some time on the Mackenzie River. I thought about that the time I was there, when we put the net in and we caught some fish. I thought about the Mackenzie River in terms of the type of protection that the Mackenzie River is receiving now, the type of protection that it should receive if we are not protecting it.

I was looking at the Deh Cho Bridge. I’ve been on the Mackenzie River and the Sahtu. We have to use that portion of the Mackenzie River as a highway...

I certainly look forward to an explanation from Mr. Aumond.

The second last question is high school career and technology studies at $400,000. We talked about communities that want to have some opportunity to be even on par with the other communities in terms of high school career and technology studies. Can I get a list of what this means and where it’s going? Some communities like Colville Lake simply don’t have that — or Tsiigehtchic or Ulukhaktok or even some of the smaller communities down in the valley that want to get into some high schools, and they’re at a disadvantage right now as I...

Mr. Chair, the question I have here is with the Chief T’Selehye School in Fort Good Hope. To be very brief, the community was offered to negotiate this school with the government. Under our land claim agreement there’s a chapter that somewhat supports contracts with the government. I know the different interpretations, different needs. I just want to know: would the government have made an offer to people in Fort Good Hope to look at it and negotiate a contract rather than a two tier RFP construction of the school?