Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of ITI. I’ve talked about the small businesspeople in the North, specifically around the communities I represent in the Sahtu region.

I want to ask the Minister of ITI, given the recent economic recession slowdown this year, has the Minister been monitoring the performance of the number of applicants under the Business Incentive Program this year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. October 19th to 26th, as we heard, is Small Business Week across Canada. While we should be celebrating the success of our small business owners and entrepreneurs, it’s almost time of a recession in the Sahtu. We saw a record high of investment in the oil and gas sector, but things are starting to quiet down. Actually, News/North put out a full page highlighting the benefits of energy exploration in the North and in the Sahtu. Perhaps the Canadian rock band, the Barenaked Ladies, sang it best: if I had a million dollars. Well, I’ll tell you what I’d do if I had that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My comments will focus on the deferred maintenance. As the Minister of Finance indicated to us earlier through his presentation to the Members, we have a huge deficit with the infrastructure in the Northwest Territories in the billions of dollars. We are doing our best to maintain that percentage of power, we are increasing to lower our deficit and it is the aging of our infrastructure.

Has the Minister, along with his colleagues, looked at the other options to look at reducing the amount of deficit we have? I think we are in the billions of dollars. This government here...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, along with Mr. Blake, have a great need for units in our communities. I have had conversations earlier with the Housing Minister in the House and in meetings about the empty units in Fort Good Hope. I know Mr. McLeod talked about the liabilities and the assessments of these empty units and if they could be either turned over to the community or looked at to see if they could be released to the community because there are a lot of houses in Fort Good Hope boarded up with plywood on the windows and doors. I know the community has a great demand for these units that are...

Again – and other Members can contest this – we have seen a lot of action plans. Action plans are sometimes five, 10, 20 years. I am asking this one here for the sake of the people in the small communities, when they come to Stanton Hospital that they can have the traditional foods served to them, not once a week. Residential school days are over. We want them to have it every day. I want to ask the Minister to put some muscle behind the action plan to say this is what we’re going to do: every day of the week we’ll have some traditional food served to our people. If you need some help, we have...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are some provisions and some programs within government that come into the communities and offer training programs. Minister, I think that’s what I’m asking if you could offer, take the initiative from the fire department, say we would like to come into Fort Good Hope, come into Colville Lake on one of the perfect opportunity dates. Because in Colville Lake, right now they’re all excited because trapping season is here.

When is the most beneficial time to come into the communities of Fort Good Hope and Colville Lake? We’d like to offer these training initiatives...

Mr. Speaker, I know some of the communities in the Sahtu certainly have their fire equipment and their volunteers in place, and they’re on stand-by, of course; they’re doing other jobs in the community.

I want to ask specifically about two communities, Colville Lake, which I talked to the chief last week as to their need to get some assistance from the department to look at a fire truck in that community because they no longer feel that there’s adequate equipment in Colville Lake.

Now, in Fort Good Hope, according to the CBC reports – I haven’t checked it out myself personally – there seems to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Minister. Can the Minister go a little further? Can he give us more certainty than the honourable Premier did last week in the House? The regulatory office is at the heart of the next vital economy engine for the Northwest Territories.

In this country, shale gas is helping to shut down the dirty coal industry south of the border.

Does the Minister and Cabinet agree to share the draft regulations with all the Members of this House before Christmas and April 1, 2015? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. I want to say that we have a saying in the Sahtu: If you shoot a moose right the first time, you’ll have enough meat and hide and you’ll feed the family.

As the regulator, we’re setting up this office now in the Northwest Territories. Is the Minister in this fashion, are we learning the hard way or are we learning the amazing and fast way? Can the Minister guarantee that we’ll be engaged in shaping the new regulation body, which stems directly and philosophically from the 17th Assembly priorities of their positions and goals? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just wish to acknowledge my constituency assistant, Josh Campbell. Lorraine Bezha, as you know, has gone to get her education and career in Fort Smith.