Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of ITI. I want to ask the Minister, within our settlement in the Sahtu Dene/Metis Land Claim Agreement, we negotiated chapter 12, I believe, on the economic measures.

I want to ask the Minister in regard to this chapter, what is the interpretation or what we agreed to in chapter 12 with the Government of the Northwest Territories with this chapter to help out the Sahtu business in regard to the economic opportunities.

Thank you. I’m just looking at the situation here for a medevac. Quickly as possible is probably two days in this situation to get this young lady out in a life and death situation. Then when she gets to Edmonton, the doctors give a different assessment. Are the assessments communicated with communities when there are serious incidents like this? Are these doctors notified and saying, get this person out as quick as possible? In this case it was two days.

What type of situation is there with the health centres when a situation is an emergency where the person needs to get out as quickly as...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Health and Social Services. I spoke about the young person who was hit by a skidoo and I wanted to ask, after she was taken to the local health centre and assessed, it was only after two days.

Do you know any reasons why it took two days to get her medevaced out of that community?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have another motion. I move that the Northwest Territories Housing Corporation submit its annual report within 90 days of the fiscal year end; and further, if this does not prove to be possible, the Housing Corporation should seek appropriate approval for an extension to their deadline and provide the House with reasons for the delay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This motion speaks about this government, past governments and the state of our communities. Ten communities in the Northwest Territories do not have a resident RCMP in their community and I happen to represent one of those communities. Other Members also have their communities. But more importantly it talks about nine communities that do not have resident nurses.

In the Northwest Territories, safety and health are very important to our people and we have have and have-not communities in regards to policing and nursing. So, I’m calling on this government to bring forward...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In the communities of Fort Good Hope, Deline and Colville Lake, most of the action right now is happening around Tulita and Norman Wells, so there are plenty of opportunities, but also for the other Sahtu communities. Specifically Fort Good Hope, Deline and Colville Lake there isn’t much activity happening there.

With programs and infrastructure that goes into those communities, is the Minister following the intent and the spirit of chapter 13 in working with the communities on any type of infrastructure projects that would be going into those communities?

Mr. Speaker, in the economic measures chapter, if there is going to be any type of changes to the policies and programs and services, is there an opportunity that this Minister will then sit down with the Sahtu leadership and discuss the type of changes that could possibly be coming forth or whatever that there’s going to be a shift from this Constitution written document?

Okay, I’ll just have to wait and see how it pans out there, I guess, with some of the issues that we might have from the Sahtu.

My last one, if you can help me out here, Mr. Chair, I want to ask on the last three sentences of this paragraph it says, “burdens and hoops clients...” What’s hoops clients? What’s that? H-O-O-P-S.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The second paragraph to the opening remarks to Bill 5, I just want some clarification in regards to the driving restrictions related to medical conditions. The proposed amendment allows the registrar the authority to request a medical examination and additional driver testing.

Speaking from a small community such as Colville Lake or Deline or Tulita or Fort Good Hope and the Wells or any other small communities, the registrar has the authority to request a medical examination. We don’t have some of the facilities and resources in our communities for this request to come in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues, for allowing this motion to come forward to have a debate on it.

This motion is a good news story for the small communities. Certainly, there are a wide range of opinions as to the program and how it’s going to be implemented and how it’s going to be rolled out in the coming years.

Our small communities, at least 10 of them, some of our communities do not have some type of programming for our junior kindergarten schools. As in the newspaper, it’s been quoted from Mr. Kochon, that’s welcome news to Colville Lake.

Twenty-nine communities next year...