Norman Yakeleya

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member, Mrs. Groenewegen, talked about being thankful, and I also want to support her on that theme here. In the Sahtu communities, in Fort Good Hope, we’re thankful for the elders. There are 64 elders that are 60 years and over. In Fort Good Hope there used to be an old folks home, they used to call it, an old seniors home, and that got condemned and now it’s all boarded up.

People in Fort Good Hope have always asked for a seniors independent living facility when the government is going to look at continuing supporting them in that initiative, and my understanding...

Mr. Speaker, will the local housing authority also receive additional funding for that position?

That’s a long time. I don’t know if I’m going to be around that long, but at least it’s on the record. I guess it’s a done deal. We will have to bite the bullet on this one here. I’m not too sure what type of impact it’s going to have on some of our requests for health and social services care in the Northwest Territories. It’s one of those things where the federal government has the majority to sort of tell us what to do and it’s not the best of positions we want to be in, so I guess I will just have to leave my questions on that and, hopefully, in 18 years from now a Member will bring this...

Given that statement by the Minister, when the federal government downloads these responsibilities, does it also download some additional dollars, because we are taking on these additional responsibilities, even though when you look at the comparison of RCMP members in the Northwest Territories to the province of British Columbia, certainly, they will feel the impact more in their health care system as to the Northwest Territories.

Is the federal government willing, or it’s take it or leave it? No. It’s you’re going to do this, this is what it’s going to cost you, and find money within the...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just for clarification, to the Minister, this act, I guess I thought that the medical services provided to the RCMP was straight across the board to all members across Canada, because of the jurisdiction and they are a national police force. Why are we changing ours to bring them into our Medical Care Act? Shouldn’t they automatically be covered under some federal legislation for their medical services?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Would the Minister say that it will be within a year, within a few months shy of us calling our next election? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, in my Member’s statement I talked about the mechanics of the Heritage Fund. I want to ask the Minister of Finance, within the life of this government, will the government consider an option to look at considering having an independent body type of framework to manage the Heritage Fund?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, hope one day we will have some discussions on Highway No. 9.

---Laughter

Hearing the Minister and just listening to my two colleagues, up in the region where the Mackenzie Valley winter road is still active and we still have our ice winter paving program there, we’d like to look at the infrastructure, but also to do with the O and M on the Mackenzie Valley winter road is the bridging. One of the major bottlenecks to continue our work is the Bear River Bridge. Just hearing some of the good news, I’m hopefully crossing my fingers on the federal infrastructure budget...

That’s an additional $228,000 that we have to look for somewhere within our small government to take on the devolution, I guess, of some of the responsibilities now that we’ve taken on that the federal government has downloaded to the provinces and the territories.

Is there any type of flexibility when you negotiate the renewal of the RCMP’s agreement with the federal government to bring in some of these costs that now we are seeing within our own territorial health dollars?

I guess you could spin this however you want to spin it, but the fact of the matter is that we’re taking on additional responsibilities and along with that it becomes an economic cost to us.

Are we going to somehow recoup or receive additional dollars because of these additional responsibilities now that come along with this act here?