Norman Yakeleya

Mr. Speaker, I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Thebacha, that, notwithstanding Rule 4, when this House adjourns on Thursday, October 23, 2014, it shall be adjourned until Monday, October 27, 2014;

AND FURTHER, that any time prior to October 27, 2014, 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...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister mentioned about a planned conference in the Sahtu, and I would ask the Minister if he would make a commitment, depending on his time availability, to come into the Sahtu and speak to the people in the Sahtu for some level of assurance and confidence, working with the Sahtu people through these troubled times so that we can look forward to better times.

Would the Minister make a commitment, given his time availability, to come to the Sahtu to attend to us and work with us during the conference?

Mr. Speaker, any type of business in the Northwest Territories, there are some very good, hardworking business people, and sometimes it makes it very difficult for them to thrive and have growth in the Northwest Territories. I talk about the various businesses such as here and around the outlying area where we had the outfitters business. Because of the decline of the caribou due to a number of factors related to the mining, to transportation, to hunting of bison, the outfitters came and asked the government to have a look at some kind of consideration to offset it because their business isn’t...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I too want to finish off this week with words of encouragement mostly to our small business people in the Northwest Territories, especially to the ones in the Sahtu region.

We have small business owners in Deline who guide people for world-class fishing. We have people in Tulita work in the business to serve the oil and gas sector of the government. We have business people in Colville Lake, where the best furs in Canada are trapped. These young trappers are business people. We also have business people in Fort Good Hope looking after the community through the housing...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’m pleased to have the department before us today. They have quite a huge infrastructure budget. I want to make my comments specifically to the small communities I represent in the Sahtu.

I’m looking forward to the day when the infrastructure in the small community of Colville Lake will be improved, the renovations of the health centre. I know it took me awhile, with the help of the previous Health Minister, to have running washrooms in the facility in that community in the health centre. I had several Ministers in there before. They came, they saw and they left. They...

With the government and with the contributions that have been happening in the Sahtu with regard to the funding and the specific sites, I want to ask the Minister, given that Imperial Oil’s 10-year water application licence is going through, they are going to take out billions of litres of water, run it through their system, bring it back, pour billions more back into the Mackenzie River that will flow down towards Fort Good Hope and Tsiigehtchic and the other communities along the river system.

I want to ask the Minister, knowing this and knowing that 720,000 tonnes of hazardous material was...

In my Member’s statement I talked about the water, and I want to ask the Minister about the water usage. The oil and gas sector has over 100 applications for water permits. We know Canada has tried to cut back on the monitoring.

Do we have the capacity to take over these positions and who are our front-line monitors? ENR has the responsibility. I wanted to ask the Minister in regard to these two questions.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I got up this morning at 5:30 to make my coffee, I was pouring the water and was wondering: how safe is this water here in Yellowknife? I thought about that after the coffee was percolating, I drank it and was thinking: how safe is our water in the Sahtu?

Hearing about the fracking issue with oil and gas, who is monitoring our water? I know we have a Sahtu Land and Water Board, we have a Sahtu Land Use Plan, we have a constitutionally protected treaty, called the Sahtu Dene and Metis Land Claim Agreement, we have provisions in there, we have people from the region...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister inform the House and inform the people in the Sahtu as to when will the baseline studies of the water use or the water monitoring in the Sahtu, because there are concerns about groundwater consequences of the technology of hydraulic fracking.

That’s an impressive list of monitoring for water quality in the Sahtu. The Minister rapidly fired off 13 sites in and around the communities that are looking forward to it.

I want to ask the Minister, in our land claims under Chapter 20 is the water rights and management of the Sahtu Land Claim Agreement. Section 21.8, I believe, talks about the quality and the quantity of altering our water in the settlement area.

I want to ask the Minister, are there increases to ongoing funding to know that this provision of the chapter will be honoured and respected and enforced if need be.