Good afternoon, colleagues. Welcome back to the Chamber. Orders of the day. Item 2, Ministers’ statements. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Mr. Speaker, the Northwest Territories has always been, and continues to be, an important area for scientific research by governments, regulatory bodies, industry and academic institutions.

Later today the Honourable Jackson Lafferty will table the Building a Path for Northern Science: Government of the Northwest Territories Science Agenda. This is the first time the GNWT has clearly defined and prioritized government-wide scientific research needs. Work on the Science Agenda began in 2007 and is the result of extensive consultation with GNWT employees engaged in research, researchers and community members.

The Science Agenda is based on the principle that science is a critical component of ensuring sustainable development, health and wellness, cultural retention and economic diversification and development.

The NWT is experiencing a period of powerful changes and challenges. Climate change, new technologies, resource development, economic change and social change are all requiring the Government of the Northwest Territories, GNWT, adapt and modify its programs and services.

The GNWT needs reliable evidence-based information, derived from scientific investigations and research, to make informed policy decisions. The Science Agenda establishes a strategic framework for science and identifies science priorities, which will guide future research and science integration for the GNWT.

It sets a path for this government and the people of the Northwest Territories to play a key role in the

development and management of science knowledge and the use of traditional knowledge in all scientific and other research conducted here.

The Science Agenda will act as a guiding document in policy decisions on a number of fronts for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the Government of the Northwest Territories, including land, water and climate change.

Mr. Speaker, five core priority areas for research have been identified. They are: cultural sustainability; environmental science and stewardship, health and wellness, natural resource management, and sustainable communities. Strategic goals, sub-priorities and implementation actions have been identified for each of these core areas. The agenda also recognizes that technological advances, traditional knowledge and climate change are issues that cut across all five core priority areas.

Given the high level of scientific interest, research and activity in the Northwest Territories, we recognize the need to work in collaboration with other governments, aboriginal organizations, communities, academic institutions, industry and other organizations and agencies to make sure these priorities and the scientific needs of the NWT residents are met.

The Science Agenda, with its commitment to various forms of scientific and traditional knowledge, will build on work already being done to promote science education in our schools. We want students to get a better understanding of how important science is to their communities and lives.

Mr. Speaker, scientific needs will evolve as our Territory grows and changes, but the importance of reliable, timely and accessible information will remain essential to ensure wise and effective decision-making processes. This Science Agenda sets the path for achieving this. Mahsi cho.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member responsible for Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I announced A Foundation for Change, Building a Healthy Future for the NWT for 2009-2012. This document will be tabled later today.

A Foundation for Change is about our future. We need to make changes to our Health and Social Services system now, to ensure our communities and our children continue to have access to affordable, quality health care and social services in the future.

Mr. Speaker, Northerners have access to some of the best health and social services available anywhere. We continue to invest extensively in the health and wellness of our people in order to build the future of our Territory. The Government of the Northwest Territories spent $313 million for health and social services including $217 million in funding to Health and Social Services Authorities in 2008-2009. Mr. Speaker, this plan does not call for a reduction in spending. What it does is it targets priorities and actions that will allow for more efficiency and a bend in the trend of health and social services spending in the Northwest Territories.

This plan has a vision for the health and social services system going forward, because we recognize we need a strong sense of where changes should lead us.

This vision speaks to the importance of community wellness, priorities and individual responsibility, as well as our accountability in delivering programs and services.

Mr. Speaker, the three goals of A Foundation for Change are wellness, accessibility and sustainability. The plan will include an increased focus on health promotion and prevention, so people can make positive choices for themselves. The plan also incorporates an emphasis on infrastructure and information technology to increase access to our residents, particularly in small and more remote communities. We will also improve governance, financial management and accountability for programs and services so there is a shared understanding of actual costs and benefits of the system.

Mr. Speaker, A Foundation for Change provides an overview of the priorities and actions we will take to move us in the right direction for the next three years. There are action items in this plan where our end result is very clear. For example, there will be new funding for health promotion in small communities. However, there are other areas where we will need to consult with communities or develop further plans before we know exactly what the end result will be, such as in the development of

community wellness plans. Over the course of 2010, we will travel to all NWT communities for community assessments. These will be designed to ensure that the services provided to Northerners are better balanced to local resources and priorities. There will also be an opportunity to share current information about regional and community health status and services.

Mr. Speaker, A Foundation for Change includes actions based on a number of partnership frameworks including the Action Plan on Family Violence, the Healthy Choices Framework, and the NWT Homelessness Framework. We will continue to build partnerships and work with communities and aboriginal governments through the community assessments.

Mr. Speaker, this plan has been developed through extensive work and review by staff of the Department of Health and Social Services and all eight health and social services authorities. I would like to thank all of the staff who helped develop this plan. I particularly would like to extend a thank you to the leaders in the Department of Health and Social Services, the members of the Joint Leadership Council, and the chief executive officers who have taken the challenge of developing this plan very seriously. I would also like to express a special mention of the Standing Committee on Social Programs, Mr. Tom Beaulieu, chair of the committee and all members of the committee for their positive and constructive feedback and comments on the plan, which we have worked to incorporate. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Item 3, Members’ statements. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a matter of great importance to my constituents in the Sahtu region. Mr. Speaker, in June of this year I raised in the House the issue of the potential sale of Arctic Red Outfitters Limited and this government’s legal and moral obligations to honour the requirements of the Sahtu Land Claim. At this time, I question the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources about the proposed sale of the Arctic Red Outfitters and their right for first refusal for the licence that the people of Sahtu had pursuant to our land claim. Mr. Miltenberger committed to getting back to me on this matter, and he did so in written correspondence.

As Members may be aware, both the Gwich’in and the Sahtu land claim agreements provide that the

respective organizations have the right of first refusal for granting of a new outfitting licence. These rights were given to the Gwich’in and the Sahtu people after many years of hard-fought negotiations, and these rights are constitutionally entrenched. They are important rights; not to be lightly ignored.

In this case, the company carried on business in both the Gwich’in and Sahtu area, and they have obligations to comply with the law in both geographic jurisdictions.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister subsequently wrote to me, confirming that the company in question was being sold and the company had been advised by the Minister’s regional staff of the need to honour the refusal rights under the Sahtu Land Claim Agreement. When I wrote and asked for more details, the Minister referred to the challenge of having dual rights of first refusal and two separate land claim agreements, and about how his department was going to review the requirements in this area so that a solution can be developed and implemented. To date, no one has approached the leadership of the Sahtu seeking the approval of the issuance of a licence which evolved in our region. This is in direct contravention of our land claim agreement.

Mr. Speaker, many months after the people of the Sahtu first heard about the proposed sale of the Arctic Red Outfitters, we are no further ahead of knowing that our land claim agreement has been complied with by this government. I appreciate that having the two land claim agreements both containing the right of first refusal can be challenging; however, this challenge does not eliminate the duty of the Crown to comply with constitutionally entrenched and constitutionally protected agreements. The fact of the law that can be challenged to comply is not an excuse for ignoring these legal requirements. The government has an obligation to respect these rights given to the people...

Mr. Yakeleya, your time for your Member’s statement has expired.

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

---Unanimous consent granted.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This government has an obligation to respect the rights given to the people in the Sahtu and their claim. The honour of the Crown demands no less. Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time I will be asking the Minister questions about this matter. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya, The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like today to discuss difficulties encountered by Yellowknife residents who happen to be clients of the Income Assistance Program.

Every MLA in here has heard from constituents regarding how hard it is to get decent customer service from Education, Culture and Employment’s Income Support Program. But in Yellowknife, because the office is located in the Greenstone Building, a very secure federal building, it presents special difficulties for clients who have to visit the office to meet with their client service officer, or CSO. The CSOs work in an area inaccessible to the public behind a locked door. So in order to meet with them, even if you have a scheduled appointment, you must call them from the reception area. If they are available, the CSO comes out and you are buzzed in to attend your meeting. Although a receptionist sits in front of that locked door, he or she does not call. The client must call.

Mr. Speaker, receptionists are front-line workers. They are the first people a client encounters at the income support office. They should be welcoming and helpful. They should be the compassionate, knowledgeable and concerned person who soothes and guides the client through the often mystifying and scary process of income support.

Yet, when you walk into the income assistance office in Yellowknife and ask a question, more often than not you get an abrupt response or are left to use the phone without assistance and there may or may not be someone at the other end of the phone line to help deal with your problems. Seldom will the receptionist consider it his or her job to help the client get in touch with the CSO.

There are a few more difficulties experienced by my constituents. Messages left on the CSO’s voice mail asking for a call back are not actioned. E-mails sent with questions about forms, next steps, getting an appointment and so on are not replied to. Clients without a phone at home must make the trip to the office several times to meet with the CSO, often without any guarantee of success.

Why no response? Well, often it’s because the CSO has been away on training, on holidays, sick leave, any one of a number of reasons and no one is covering for that staffer who happens to be away. The client, usually in need of immediate help, is left to their own devices for up to a week trying to survive some crisis on their own.

Income support should be an office, a program that provides service to their customers, that provides assistance to residents who are in need. How can the client get assistance when no CSO will meet with them? If income support really believes that

they deal with clients, then the attitude should be that of serving the customer and satisfying the customer. There needs to be a major shift in the approach used...

Ms. Bisaro, your time for your Member’s statement has expired.

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

---Unanimous consent granted.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to my colleagues. There needs to be a major shift in the approach used by CSOs with YK income support clients, a focus on service to the client, not the CSO. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Member’s statement today is proposed changes to the Food Mail Program. Currently, when residents of Nunakput go to the grocery store to buy groceries, they are shipped and subsidized by the Food Mail Program. They still could pay up to $10 for a salad or even more for two litres of milk.

Mr. Speaker, given the sufficient amount of spending on the Food Mail Program, this should not be happening. This is not the original vision or intention of the Food Mail Program.

The food mail system has evolved into the largest federal government subsidy program in the North, Mr. Speaker. The current way the food mail is administered, this is less than bizarre. The federal government transfers funds to Canada Post, they contract shippers and subsidy shipping rates are passed on to the consumer. Mr. Speaker, this false hope has made the cost of living in most northern communities a luxury that only the privileged can afford. What they support in the market is a natural approach where the consumer can directly and visibly subsidize a point of sale, thus eliminating the need to have administration carried out by Canada Post.

Mr. Speaker, any revision to the current approach of using Canada Post as an inter-mediator is unacceptable. Any revision that does not allow the consumer, who has a right to be a recipient of the subsidy, to see the subsidy is unacceptable. This current approach does not really help small communities by making healthy living and healthy eating affordable.

I have recently read that the INAC report believes that 62 percent of the subsidy is actually reaching the consumer. The government must commit itself to initiating a revised program to ensure the

remaining 38 percent, of which becomes $25 million, actually affects the process in the North.

I am encouraging the government to work with the Members of the Legislative Assembly to work progressively with the Government of Canada so the Food Mail Program works and can be adopted whereby each dollar of the federal government provides northern nutrition.

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

---Unanimous consent granted.

I am encouraging the government to work with the Members of the Legislative Assembly to work progressively with the Government of Canada so the Food Mail Program works and can be adopted whereby each dollar of the federal government provides northern nutrition and results in a dollar reduction to the cost for the northern consumer.

Mr. Speaker, we owe the accountability to our constituents. We owe this to the health of northern consumers. Mr. Speaker, I will have questions for the appropriate Minister at the appropriate time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The time has never been riper to make the most of our opportunities for northern agriculture. By now, I think we’ve all heard we should think globally and act locally whenever possible. Mr. Speaker, I believe this is especially true for the way we eat and live here in the North, where we face some of the highest costs of living, especially on our food.

Mr. Speaker, there is great demand to buy locally produced products. Across the NWT, we see interest and enthusiasm from northern agriculture. Just ask the Arctic Farmer, who provides herbs to restaurants and there is a hungry demand for those products.

Mr. Speaker, with the decline of the caribou, we need to find solutions for meat to supply the North. Perhaps the caribou crisis is the nexus we needed to finally consider other options seriously. We’ve all known and heard about the South Slave where they were raising pork, raising poultry and other types of beef products over the years that were adjusted and able to produce quite well in this climate, but they are all gone.

Mr. Speaker, the natural features of the NWT bog would be ideal for raising cranberries, which is a billion dollar industry. Mr Speaker, I have heard that

places in B.C. don’t want cranberries to suck up their bog and produce things. I want their millions of dollars here in the North, Mr. Speaker, and I hope the Minister too would feel that way.

Mr. Speaker, if you plant a crop, it will produce a crop for 35 years. Mr. Speaker, this is an excellent opportunity to market cranberries to the world. We could take advantage of the northern bog and produce cranberries to feed at Thanksgiving dinners, to produce cranberry drinks, Mr. Speaker.

The Territorial Farmers’ Association estimates that 3.7 million acres of land is suitable to raising potatoes, carrots and livestock here in the North, but we only need 12 acres to produce 25 percent of our existing demand on our food, Mr. Speaker.

Expanding agriculture here in the North to meet 25 percent of our demand to produce products would only really require 5,000 acres of land, Mr. Speaker. That could turn into a $7.4 million investment.

Mr. Speaker, that would produce 31 person years of employment. Mr. Speaker, that would be a great hoorah for our GDP. Mr. Speaker, opportunity is growing on our doorstep and all it has to do is be picked or plucked.

Mr. Speaker, the Territorial Farmers’ Association needs help and I think there are a lot out there that could do a lot of great work, Mr. Speaker. So, Mr. Speaker, I think it’s time to put our hand to the plough and stop looking back and moving forward. Mr. Speaker, I will have questions for the Minister of ITI later today about how we can make sure the Growing Forward money gets in the hand of our agriculture industry. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to talk about supporting our local contractors when it comes to dealing with contaminated soil issues in our smaller communities such as Lutselk'e and Fort Resolution.

Mr. Speaker, in these smaller communities we have local businesses and contractors that are providing a service to the community and in doing so they are also doing their part to contribute to the employment and the economy within their respective communities. However, Mr. Speaker, from time to time, for whatever reason, local contractors are excluded or lose out on local contracting jobs to outside competitors. I can see it if elements of the contract submissions were unreasonable. If not, there is no way this should happen and if so, we have a problem with the process. Among such an area, Mr. Speaker, is that every community in the NWT has its share of

contaminated soil issues. Whether it be from local power plants, private and commercial buildings or delivery service vehicles, fuel spills do happen; more than we’d like, but they do happen.

Mr. Speaker, if local contractors in these communities have the capacity to undertake the various fuel spill jobs such as clean-up, transporting, remediation and storage of contaminated soil, then does it not make sense, Mr. Speaker, for these local contractors to be given every opportunity to take these jobs on?

Mr. Speaker, in Fort Resolution a local contractor lost out on one such opportunity to an outside contractor, I believe due to a lack of site for contaminated soil. Mr. Speaker, however, how difficult would it be to identify a plot of land, fence it off and develop it for use of a contaminated soil storage and remediation site?

Mr. Speaker, the recreation of a site would bring an immediate benefit to a local economy and possibly even create some employment opportunities. Mr. Speaker, if the community has the capacity to with its own contaminated soils issues, then the Department of Environment and Natural Resources should make every effort to work with the community to do so. Later today, I will have questions for the Minister of ENR. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I have another great idea. I have been talking about renewable resources, Mr. Speaker, and I want to talk about agriculture today.

Mr. Speaker, why can’t we identify tracts of land for agriculture in the Northwest Territories? We have regressed when it come to the area of production of our own food. Mr. Speaker, not that many years ago, boats used to travel down the Mackenzie River and carry fresh fruit to the communities and that product was grown here in the Northwest Territories at many different locations, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, some of the richest land that we know of in Alberta today is in northern Alberta. Mr. Speaker, there are more frost-free days in La Crete, Alberta, than there are in Red Deer and there are fertile soils of the river valleys of the Peace, Athabasca and the Boyer, to name a few.

Mr. Speaker, why not agriculture on the Slave or Mackenzie River valleys? This is why, Mr. Speaker: our land is on hold pending the outcome of unsettled land claims. What if claimant governments could earn money from the lease of

their lands for the growing of crops? Good precipitation with our long days of sunlight in the North with no negative impact on the land and a renewable sustainable resource plus food for our people.

Mr. Speaker, the old thinking in crop farming used to be that person only farmed what they owned, but the new and modern way of thinking about this, Mr. Speaker, is for the farmers to actually invest in the equipment, and the workforce and the seed and the product that they need and to actually lease the land so the economies of scale are greater and they can produce. So the idea of having to own the land that you would crop farm is an idea of the past. So leasing the land would not interfere with the interests that our northern aboriginal governments have in the land.

Mr. Speaker, this could be a win/win situation. It would create economy, revenue for claimant groups while land claims are being settled and so on, and the production of crops and food closer to home would drastically reduce the cost, Mr. Speaker.

So to this question today, I will have some points for the Minister of ITI and why not? Why can’t we do it? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.