Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to say to the Minister and staff that we look forward to the increased support that this department is going to receive for the trappers. That just says that we believe in trapping and the way of life and support the Aboriginal trappers’ way of life in general, in terms of the value that the trapping industry brings to the Northwest Territories. I know our furs in the North are one of the most sought after in the world in terms of the quality that we bring to the industry down south, and it speaks a great volume and we have increased the dollars to this lifestyle. It is a lifestyle and it is sometimes difficult turning it into a business; however, it has been done, it has been proven and I want to thank the department for supporting that type of lifestyle that we have in our small communities where unemployment is high and there are some young people that do want to become trappers and it is a very honest and honourable way of life, I say.
I also want to ask the Minister to continue to forcefully push the initiative for small foods, such as wildlife, into our communities where it could be available. Even available to our Legislative Assembly here and into our institutions that we operate up and down the Mackenzie Valley. Food, I think that is one of our most unused resources that we have is the good food that we have up here. So I support the department to continue to push its Cabinet colleagues to strongly invest into the northern foods, take advantage of what we have here. I want to say that to the Minister.
I do want to say also, my colleague that spoke about the depreciative efforts by the department regarding bringing our electricity rates down through the initiatives of the Ministerial Energy Committee and all the Assembly itself had
something to do with it, so that is a very good news that the Member has said from Mackenzie Delta. Once in a while we get to toot our horn all together. I say this to our people in the North, that we are listening. Sometimes it doesn’t seem we’re listening quickly enough, they say, because a bunch of other things have to take form before we can actually make it a reality. So I’d like to thank the Minister for his persistence and patience for making this become something we can all benefit from in the North.
I want to ask the Minister to continue to work on these socio-economic agreements with the mining companies. I’d like to see how it’s going to benefit the Sahtu people in the long run in terms of employment. Again, I said unemployment is quite high in the Sahtu communities and we’d certainly like to see those benefits come further away from the radius of the Yellowknife area into the Sahtu region. I know there are some people that are working in the mines from my communities. However, it’s not enough and we haven’t really seen the impact of the mines in my region. Hopefully that will continue to be the focus of the Minister and his staff to look at that area.
I had some other things to say. I wanted to touch a little bit on the parks. There’s only one park that we have I think in the Sahtu. McKinley Park is a very small park in Norman Wells and when I look at the other regions I see a list of rolls and rolls of parks in the other regions and when it comes to the Sahtu I see only one. I’m not too sure what initiatives the department and the Sahtu Region can work together at to look at more than one park. I know we are working on the possibility of the CANOL Heritage Trail, Do et’q Park, however, that has to go through some other federal work and they were not yet ready to implement any serious types of real work from this department. So it’s in the federal government’s hands. I thought maybe we might do some prep work, or we could do some things that would look at Do et’q Canyon, the CANOL Heritage, especially when there’s activity going on there and INAC is the one that holds the lands and there are uses of that trail. Hopefully we can have some other discussions on it, on the use of ATVs and vehicles. It’s not in our jurisdiction, but we are getting that park and we want to get a park that’s not being damaged. So I think we need to sit down with INAC and put some restrictions on that trail. Again, the GNWT can certainly voice their concerns. This department has also voiced concerns in other areas of our land on parks. So we could certainly do that. The Minister of Environment was here the other day. I certainly hope that he heard some of my concerns on the water, but they certainly can hear some of the concerns on parks also. So I think it’s a matter of priorities.
The Minister has done some good work in tourism in promoting the Sahtu. I just got sort of a report
card on what’s happening in my region and I’m very pleased that people are working on some initiatives. I believe this department needs to be congratulated in terms of promoting the arts and crafts and world stages such as the Olympics. I was down there and it was very impressive. They did a darn good job. I’ve got to watch what I say here, but they did a darn good job of promoting the North and the people and we have some pretty good talent that the department showed off to the world.
So I wanted to thank the Minister for promoting some of the initiatives that we have in the Sahtu. We’ve built some very impressive projects such as the moose skin boat last year in Tulita, which is something that hasn’t been built in 20 years, Mr. Chair. This was done because of the cooperation between the department and the community of Tulita to build a moose skin boat and people were happy. I was actually there and I put a couple ribs in that moose skin boat. So kudos to me for helping out, but I’m just a beginner learner in that process. I wanted to say that brought a lot of joy to a lot of people, a lot of memories in putting together that moose skin boat for our people. So it’s these types of small initiatives that go a long way in my people’s minds, yet we still need to work with the Minister.
I want to say thank you to the Minister and his staff for continuing to work with the Sahtu people and I look forward to other things that could help us out. Thank you.