Richard Edjericon

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you, Premier. You know, I, you know, we're getting land claims done here in the North, across Canada and, you know, a lot of this is based on treaties and, you know, took a long time to get to that point. Especially here in the Northwest Territories, now they're coming together. But this recent announcement now that just came out, you know, I know for sure it's going to get talked about. It's going to be talked about in days to come. And I just want to know how we're going to probably with the help of the GNWT, what can you do to pressure the Catholic...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to apologize to the Premier for not getting my questions to you a little bit earlier. Since the Vatican announced announcement, I only found out this morning of this announcement. Today the Vatican development and education office released a statement formally reputing, or in other words to reject or untrue or unjust, the doctrine of discovery.

Going forward, Mr. Speaker and I'm sure the GNWT Premier and the federal Government of Canada will need time to review the Vatican's announcement to reputing the doctrine of discovery and how this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm trying to  I got nine minutes. I just got one  I mean, a question to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Simpson.

Now that we have the federal minister here for infrastructure, I just thought maybe I'll take this opportunity to remind you if we could work together trying to get a new school for Dettah. And it's been the 1970s when that school was there. And it needs to complete the school in Dettah. They've been asking and asked that question this year. So I just thought maybe if we could work together in trying to get the Government of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I go back into the communities, like we got a lot of community members and elders talk about that there is still probably a large uranium that's probably in the water and they're concerned about that. That's also on the land. So that affects the fish and the aquatic life and birds and everything else. So I look forward to work with the Premier on this. But this is going back to 1978. Giant Mine, you know, it happened in 1946, 56 years later it closed, and we had a public inquiry, a public inquiry which essentially is like an environmental assessment hearing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the headwaters is the life and blood of our homeland in the Mackenzie River basin. Throughout the years, we have been forced to adjust to a confluence of industrial threats upstream from us, a toxic cocktail of deadly contaminants flowing past our camps, communities, and impacting our waters sorry, cocktails impacting our waters, lands and animals and the people. The health of the water and the land is connected to the wellbeing of our people. We face increased health problems from a rare disease and a climb in cancer rates throughout the North but, in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you, Premier, for your response. Normally at the end of a public inquiry, through that process we also could look at, you know, compensation and also a public apology. So that's kind of what I'm hearing from the community, from the chief and council in Lutselk'e, and they brought that to my attention. So in our dialogue, I guess as we bring this out and look at it and how we're going to approach it, that's also something that the people are looking for. So just so the Premier knows about that so maybe if she could just add a comment to that as well. Thank...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for your latitude in extending me some time to conclude my Member's statement. And thank you to all my colleagues as well.

Mr. Speaker, whenever I go back into my riding in Lutselk'e or Fort Resolution, they keep talking about Cosmos 954 and the impacts and the cumulative impacts as well. And that happened in 1978. And I know bringing this up now, but I didn't give enough time to the Premier, and I do apologize about that as well. But I just wanted to see if there's a way we could work with this government and Government of Canada to start bringing this...

You're welcome to read that if you want. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Committee heard loud and clear that Indigenous youth are the future of the NWT. Incentives to attract, train, and retain Indigenous students by developing practicum and coop placements within vacant GNWT positions, and transitioning students from Aurora College into GNWT jobs, are essential to increasing Indigenous representation and retention across the GNWT.

Committee heard about the need to track the number of Indigenous youths seeking public service employment under programs such as the Schools North Apprenticeship...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday when we were looking at this bill and also talked about it, you know, we you know, in my riding, I've been here for just over a year, and I put forward ideas about how we could try to work to improve the lives of our people in our communities. I talked about winter road. I talked about housing, infrastructure. Again, you know, when I sat here yesterday listening to adding all these sups in terms of increasing these budgets and everything else, no problem. You know, it's like, we've been, you know, bang every time these guys want money in all these other...

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's been a long session. We're coming to the end of the session here now, and through the next few days we're going to be really busy here. And through committee work, we've been busy as he will. Earlier, I had mentioned that we're having our, you know, annual carnival in our community of Dettah and N'dilo and Lutselk'e as well, and the invitation is basically for everybody. But I'm just thinking as well in Fort Resolution this coming weekend there are also the Fort Resolution Metis government is also hosting a dog racer, and they're going to be one dog...