Norman Yakeleya

There are also other trappers in the North, you know, waiting for the snow to come. I guess they’re in the same situation as Colville Lake.

I just want to ask the Minister if he will give any consideration to the invitation to trappers from Colville Lake to go down to visit an auction type of sale that goes on when they have that event. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I want to register my comments, I guess, on this one here. It has to do with the North Slave Correctional Centre, the security fencing. The justification for this versus some of our own communities’ needs of correction in the small communities and the types of situations where our justice programs and services, things that we want to do in our small communities are always falling off the table because of no money or we just don’t do it this year, and we have a facility that’s here that the department wants to, for their reasons and their own justifications, put a $2 million fence to...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to say to the Minister, certainly the health centre’s flooring replacement in Fort Good Hope is much appreciated and needed. I know I did do some visits. This was actually a couple of years ago, so I’m glad it has been looked at. It has been dealt with and I appreciate it.

At the same time, when I visit the health centre facilities in Tulita, I am hoping that we would look at more urgent need because of the progress that I’ve tabled to the Minister, not to have our hardworking nurses cohabit with mice in the communities within the centres there. That’s very...

This is just a quick comment here on the child and family services and the shelters and what you’re calling group homes. I know we don’t have those emergency shelters in the communities and I just want to ask the Minister, in his future discussions with the department and communities in the Sahtu health board, if there are designated emergency shelters and if there are some empty facilities, some empty homes in some of our communities where some of the families are taken out of the community, and there are some people left, also, could be deemed homeless if they moved to Yellowknife. We’re in...

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.