Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Dene people see this as a loophole by the federal government. It does not seem fair when the federal government designed and implemented a regulatory system, will take 50 percent of the royalties on these developments but won’t pay for the cleanups. This is a loophole. Why is there no definite plan in place to place full responsibility for the remediation that’s needed on the federal government? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, what is the Government of the Northwest Territories doing to ensure that the waste sites that are listed or that are contemplated in such devolution agreement in the future are cleaned up in a timely fashion? What is the time frame for this? Is this going to go on forever or is there going to be a time frame for a clean-up of these waste sites? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Krutko, Mr. Roland, and Mr. Robert C. McLeod are not in the House and would have recognized the Languages Commissioner, Sarah Jerome. I’d like to recognize the Languages Commissioner.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.

---Unanimous consent granted

It’s very unfortunate that money can’t go directly to the communities. I think that the communities would have a better idea. I know that in speaking to the elders in the community -- I know I’m out of time, Mr. Chairman, I’ll be short -- the elders in the community indicate to me that their idea of trying to work with the emotional and social aspects around suicide prevention would be to be bringing people. I had asked the Minister on this on another matter, to bring people in that will work with the communities, like healers and so on that will work with the communities. I think that’s...

That’s good, actually. That sounds good, the money from the federal government. What is the plan to roll out the budget? Is it just filling budgets that are already at the community level or is this a little bit of new money? If so, what’s the communication strategy of the department to the small communities for this particular line item?

Mr. Speaker, can the Minister work with the First Nation governments to look seriously at community solutions to combating addictions? Thank you.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. I’d hoped that the Standing Committee on Social Programs would have had an opportunity to discuss the Department of Health and Social Services’ response to our recommendations before we began debating in the House or talking about it in the media. However, the response was tabled and the free-for-all has ensued, so I too will now talk about the government’s response.

The Department of Health and Social Services indicated that they did not accept the recommendation for prevention and early intervention in the 2011-2012 budget because the budget had already passed. This...

The last, there are a few smaller items in here, too, but with the time allotted, the last key item again has long-term benefits in cost and is trying to provide for care for elders in the home. Right now the overall government policy doesn’t make it really easy for individuals to care for their elders. If we have an elder -- and we have that situation occurring a few times in both communities that I represent, in Lutselk’e and Fort Resolution -- where younger family members are either living with their elderly parents or their elderly grandparents. Without those members supporting the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is an area that is of great interest to me in the health field; the whole area of treatment and counselling and so on and so forth. Speaking to local health workers, the cost of other health, the cost of people being sick and hospitalized and whatnot, a lot of that is attributed to, I guess, not necessarily all addictions but attributed to alcohol. The health workers seem to think that alcohol is a big, huge contributing factor in small communities for the health of the folks. The communities also seem to have a solution. I’d like to see the department working...