Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of Transportation. January 6th to 7th and the 8th, the Minister and I took an afternoon drive to the Sahtu communities of Tulita and Fort Good Hope. There were a lot of complaints from the residents. We went through washboard alley and pothole dip valley also. The roads are not quite as smooth as we thought they were, despite the good work of our contractors. A lot of people were asking, where is the water, where’s the water paving program of this department on the Sahtu winter road? I want to ask the Minister what happened this year...

I respect the survivors’ anonymity or the privacy of the survivors, so some of the information in the Northwest Territories, we know how many survivors or how many, say, students are in a school right now without having them consent to releasing that number. I want to ask why it’s so different with the survivors. If there are some survivors in our community, we can do our own. For example, in the Grollier Hall residential school, from the Roman Catholics report there were 2,500 students that went to the Grollier Hall Residential School, the highest amount of survivors in one residential school...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to ask the Minister, has this department ever done an inventory as to the exact number of residential school survivors in the Northwest Territories?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Member’s Statement has to deal with O Canada. Our darkest histories of dealing with Aboriginal people have been a struggle because of the experiences of dealing with the residential schools in Canada. Since the 1800s, Aboriginal people have been subject to injustice in all facets of life.

In the early 1900s, the establishment of residential schools were created in Canada. The goal of these residential schools was to eradicate a nation of people, everything about them. The storm of the residential schools certainly did a good job. They caused a lot of havoc in the...

So, Minister, and Mr. Chair, that’s for all of the Northwest Territories, because we certainly heard it in the budget dialogue that we need revenue, and if you have revenue to do things that we want to do, that will certainly help us.

I just wanted to make a last pitch for the Aboriginal business people in the region, the ones that have the ma and pa type of tourism lodges. You know, we want the best for them. They’ve put sweat and equity into that business and at times it’s quite expensive to bring people out to those lodges, but when they get out to those lodges they sure love the country...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to know from the Minister in regards to the legal aid services in our smaller communities, regions. I know I spoke to the Minister earlier in the year on an issue that came up in my riding and the Minister responded with some of the issues the department has to deal with.

I’m more concerned with the quality of the services provided to my constituents when they have to go to court and the quality and the quantity of time with their legal aid counsel. Is the policy to have a number of lawyers in each community when they have a court hearing? I think the Minister...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The people really appreciate the Minister coming on the Sahtu winter roads and seeing it for himself. The previous Minister came on the winter road, too, drove the 700 and some-odd kilometres. I think we need to have some of our people here, some of the Ministers and people here just to take a drive on these winter roads just to experience it, to know what we’re talking about. It’s really strange to sit here and talk about it without first experiencing and knowing what people, day in and day out, go through on the Sahtu winter roads.

I want to thank the department and...

After driving the winter roads, boy, was my back ever sore. It’s 12 hours, two days driving the roads. I want to ask the Minister, is his department looking at any other means of watering the road so that it will stay longer? I know there are different mechanisms to water the winter roads from Wrigley on up to Fort Good Hope and even to the smaller communities. Is the department looking at any other ways to smooth out the road?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to that from the Minister. I appreciate the flexibility to share, because that is a very important number for our communities.

I want to ask the Minister, based on that number, are the appropriate programs there to support the survivors today with the programs that we have within the GNWT?

I want to again ask the Minister to challenge the schools. You know, there are people in what the Budget Dialogue talked about, putting hammers and screwdrivers and wrenches into the young hands. You know, there are kids that are very, very intelligent, very smart. You know, just the hard work. So how do we get them into the schools maybe where it’s exciting where they want to be in school? Is there a challenge in the schools that the Minister can challenge the school and say, any schools in the Northwest Territories who have a certain percentage of attendees, you’ll somehow be rewarded with...