Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement, I talked about the Tulita leadership meeting this past couple of days, and again, I appreciate the Ministers and the Premier making themselves available on the short notice.

I want to ask my questions to the Minister of ITI. Due to the delay in further work and the exploration work in the Sahtu, work will still continue on the Husky road. They will continue doing environmental studies and some seismic work this summer.

I want to ask the department what type of department planning initiatives will continue to ensure that the people in the Sahtu...

There are 10 Aurora Collage graduates this year. What are the training opportunities? We’re looking for a Sahtu technical institution. We have 295 people in the Sahtu today who are capable of working, plus more that need to get to work. We had income assistance decrease a million dollars when there was work going on in the Sahtu region.

The point I want to conclude is our people want wellness. They want to have wellness of our people, on-the-land programs, a transition home for people, and they want to get our people to work. The message is that we want to work. What I want to say in closing...

Mr. Chair, I want to throw in my comments to the facility in Hay River. It’s a good facility and certainly I would support that. Madam Groenewegen talked about this in a previous session here, about having that facility maybe be considered with some work with the federal government and our government as a centre for excellence because we have a high population of people needing diabetes awareness and programming and stuff like that, that facility can be used for diabetes services for the people of the Northwest Territories.

According to the Health department documents, there are at least 200...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One of the concerns that we have also has to do with the geoscience work that’s happened up in the Sahtu.

Is the Minister also going to be involved in some of the leadership, some of the work that could happen that our people also can take advantage of the geoscience work that is going to be happening in the Sahtu?

The people in the Sahtu are looking at other opportunities due to the delay in the exploration work. I want to ask the Minister about the other opportunities that we really should talk about and what specifically.

Will the Minister come to the Sahtu to work and meet with the people in the Sahtu to continue this type of dialogue we’ve had in the last couple of days?

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General’s report was tabled in the Legislative Assembly on March 4, 2014. This year’s performance audit focused on child and family services. The department is responsible for the overall management of the child and family services system, and the director of child and family services has key obligations under the act to protect children from harm, abuse and neglect. The regional authorities are responsible for assisting the director in fulfilling these obligations.

Many lives are touched by the child and family services system. Across our jurisdiction over 1,000...

What I am hoping from this Minister is saying yes, let’s look at some out-of-the-box type of solutions. I’m really happy the Minister talked about possibly income support. Can the Minister sit down with the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment to say listen, we have an issue here because of the bureaucracy, because of the timetable, we just aren’t able to meet the current needs right now of what’s happening. The issue is medical escorts that need to be compensated by people in the communities. It’s okay here in Yellowknife, you can drive your car and head over there, but from the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve wanted to tag team with my colleague from the Mackenzie Delta on this issue of medical escorts, especially paid escorts from our small communities. When I returned back to Yellowknife, I met a constituent in Deline that talked about him going out with an elder to escort the elder out, but the elder is going to be in the hospital for about a month or so and he said I just can’t afford to stay with him for a month or so. We need to do something with the medical escorts, so I’m glad that Mr. Blake is raising it today.

I wanted to ask the Minister, between the RFP and...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also want to join you in welcoming back the Members from a good spring and from a good spring hunt if you went out and did some spring hunting and come back to work. I want to use this Member’s statement, as I did in my last sessional statement, to offer my condolences on behalf of the Sahtu region to all people who have felt loss in their communities of their loved ones. From time to time, as I said in my last statement, we get so busy with our jobs and as we do many things in our small communities, especially when we have close relationships with our family members...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Minister commit to the House before the end of this session that the conversation has been had with the Minister, we’re looking at options, again, what can we do within the session here? I’m looking for some support, some direction, so when we go back to our communities we can say yes, the government will look at this. This is for all my communities in the Sahtu that there will be some compensation when medical escorts are asked, you know. That’s the type of support I’m looking for. I really don’t know. Maybe if I was on the other side I would have some...