Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Madam Chair. On this page here, I do have a motion to read out.

I appreciate that. I believe those numbers went up, Mr. Ramsay, when we first got in as MLAs, but I’m not too sure if the numbers stayed the same or went down for communities without RCMP members. I would like to see a plan of action from this government to start putting in full-time members into the communities. There are 12 without RCMP members and there are nine communities without nurses and we don’t seem to be putting much emphasis on the basics of putting some essential services in our communities. We are dealing with them through community patrols once a month. If the weather is good...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few questions. Mr. Minister, do you know if communities like Colville Lake and other communities without RCMP members in there full time, have the communities talked with the department as to what type of preventive measures or, as Mr. Moses talked about, a situation sometimes from Fort Good Hope, it is about a 45-minute flight, if it is good weather, or it is a three-hour drive by truck. Sometimes situations happen in real time that requires community action.

Is there any type of discussion on community enforcement or what could happen when the members are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I ask the Minister of Transportation, once he gets his full briefing from the department on this Four Mile Creek Bridge, if he would provide it to me and the Members of the House to know that this work will get done, will get on the books of completion, because from what I’m understanding, the work in the Sahtu will continue to increase and the bridge is important for the community and also important for the oil and gas activity that’s happening in the Tulita district.

With this recent work stoppage with the Four Mile Creek Bridge, will the department or will this Minister see if it’s salvageable by this winter? I know there’s not much time left, but this is an outsider contractor coming in to work in our area. I’m not too sure what happened, but somebody goofed on this one here, so certainly it causes some concern for us in the region here.

Is this work salvageable? Can we do as much as we can before the winter road is closed?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last year there were 106 trappers that sold close to 4,000 pelts and injected $725,000 into the local economy of the Northwest Territories. We know that the Asian countries and the European countries are well versed in the Northwest Territories fur.

Is there any type of report as to the number of trappers now in the Sahtu that his department is tracking to see if we are going to pass the numbers that we had from last year’s report?

Can the Minister of ITI inform the House, with the funding that we got from the federal government it will be geared towards promoting opportunities for employment and skill development training in both the traditional and the industrial sectors of the Sahtu regional economy, from that is there going to be some type of report or some type of plan that says you can be a trapper in these seasons and then you could switch to the industrial sector of the economy and go back to life on the land? Is there some type of plan that would see our people in the Sahtu having these types of opportunities in...

The reason why I’ve asked for a registered volunteer list is because we are so busy throughout the year with the hand games in Whati or Tulita or Fort Good Hope, or tournaments we have throughout the year in Inuvik, Norman Wells or Deline or Yellowknife or Hay River that at the end of the year we can see the number of volunteers that contributed to making these events successful. That way we can get a percentage of the number of volunteers that we have in our communities, regions and even the Northwest Territories.

I want to know if that is something the Minister would consider through his...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of MACA. I talked about the hard work and the efforts of the many volunteers in the Northwest Territories. Is there a register that lists the volunteers in the North?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to use my Member’s statement to give thanks to all the volunteers in our small communities and our communities in the Northwest Territories that, with great passion, dedication and encouragement, take their children to sporting events, hand game events, people who take time out to organize the events to get the people and rally around them to cook for young students, young people who play hockey in the hockey tournaments, or to the hand game tournaments, to the drivers, people who put up their place for people to stay. I’ve seen a lot of these people in the Sahtu...