Norman Yakeleya

I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Frame Lake, that notwithstanding Rule 4, that when this House adjourns on Thursday, June 2, 2005, it shall be adjourned until Wednesday, October 12, 2005.

AND FURTHER that any time prior to October 12, 2005, if the Speaker is satisfied, after consultation with the Executive Council and Members of the Legislative Assembly, that the public interest requires that the House should meet at an earlier time during the adjournment, the Speaker may give notice and thereupon the House shall meet at the time stated in such notice and shall transact its...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, the Minister should be aware that there is more than me in the Sahtu. We would take the Sahtu people like Cece McCauley-Hodgson, who has been a consistent advocator for the Mackenzie all-weather road, truly a woman warrior from the region. Madam Speaker, once again, can the Minister look at taking a small delegation from the Sahtu region who can help the Minister and also help the Premier in terms of seeking some additional dollars from the federal counterparts to build an all-weather road in the Sahtu?

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you, Mr. Minister. In the original proposal under the Corridors for Canada, the funding was never identified for roads in that proposal. I am asking for future proposals, but I am not sure if it’s going to be in the future proposal. It’s hard to believe that the best bush road is the Ingraham Trail just out of Yellowknife. It’s paved. You have millions of dollars going in there, yet our region is left out of the all-weather road system. How can the Minister give satisfaction to the people in the Sahtu that an all-weather road that connects the communities in...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, the joint ventures that sometimes happen in the Sahtu are 10 percent joint ventures just up front. The southern companies say we have a connection to the local business or the region, and then there are 51 and 49 percent joint ventures. Those are the real homegrown businesses that have equity in the region and sometimes those companies lose out on those 10 percent joint ventures. Madam Speaker, that’s what I am asking for the government to look at, is the real companies in the Sahtu to make sure those monies that are spent by the people who live and...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, some of the business that has been done in the Sahtu…Well there are different interpretations of the joint ventures and they come into the region, do their business, then take the majority of the economics out of the region, not even using the businesses in the region. My question to the Minister is can he work with his Cabinet Members to ensure that northern businesses do have some level of equality or some level playing field in terms of receiving contracts from the government, making sure that some of these outside joint ventures are encouraged to...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize the member from a Tlicho community, Joe Beaverho. Thank you.

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Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, I, too, want to send out my congratulations to the hard-working people in Hay River for the fine event, and thank you, Minister, for inviting us down to the NWT track meet yesterday.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, in my statement, I quoted John Diefenbaker’s vision to the northern frontier, building roads. In John Diefenbaker’s roads in the past 30 years of that vision being voiced in Ottawa, I would like to ask the Minister of Transportation if he could outline a brief strategy of his department’s intentions to move on building an all-weather road in the Sahtu region. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I guess that’s where you get into the smaller regions versus Yellowknife. Lots of money is going into essentially what our regions are asking for: clinics or additional housing for physicians or staff professionals to get into a region and you put this kind of money into here and that’s what the perceptions out in the community is being viewed as. So I guess they look at the government’s priorities in terms of its spending and hope it will change in the future. This is something that I’m not quite comfortable with in terms of the explanation. Thank you, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The whole process of this decentralization is somewhat confusing for me because the first time I really did notice it was when I saw it in the newspaper and I’m not too sure we had the opportunity to have some discussion with our community members or in our region. What’s more startling is that I found 25 percent of the referrals are from Inuvik and the Sahtu and 40 percent are from the community of Yellowknife.

This is a Territorial Treatment Centre. I support the decentralization policy this government has undertaken and that there are a lot of our youth in small...