Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have said in my Member’s statement that several elders in 1979, Chief Paul Wright and Chief George Kodakin said in the public meeting that one day we are going to put our nets in the water and when we lift the nets, there are either going to be no fish in there or there are going to be fish in there that will be sick and dying and no one will want to eat them. That is the prophecy they said to us in 1979. This is why I bring this issue up of water quality monitoring in the Sahtu along the Mackenzie River. We need to know.

How soon would the Minister be able to tell us that we could specifically have one in Providence, Wrigley, along Norman Wells and so forth, Tsiigehtchic and all the way up to the Beaufort-Delta? Specifically, we need to have water monitoring quality stations in the future. Will we have a lab and ask for another lab? When can the Minister tell us that this is something that he will take to the federal government to start putting these sites into the plan to have along in the Northwest Territories?

Mr. Speaker, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out at this juncture as we talk about the need to have better information on the water, better decision-making as it pertains to water at a time when the federal government is cutting billions of dollars out of their various departmental programs to save anywhere between $4 million and $8 billion this year. They are looking at a lot of cases, scientists and Environment and Natural Resources and a lot of resources that they currently have are going to disappear.

We are pursuing this as a GNWT initiative with some partners that we are working with, but clearly, if we want to do this the right way, if we want to actually have the decision-making, then it gets us back to the need to get devolution so that we have a legal authority over land, water and resource development. We don’t have to rely on the federal government. We can use our own sources. We can make our own decisions in the North. That is the critical piece in the next year and a half.

The monitoring stations, we will be working on and hopefully in the course of the next business plan we will be able to show some progress, but in the meantime the fundamental issue that we do need are the levers of control finally in the Northwest Territories, land, water and resource development. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about the declining population of the Northwest Territories. There are ways of addressing that. We can attract new people. We can keep the people we have. We can multiply the people we have or there is another huge target audience out there, the people who work in the Northwest Territories but live somewhere else. That is what I want to ask the Minister of ITI about today. Have there been changes in the socio-economic agreements that were originally signed with the diamond mines? We hear that the Yukon is doing so well because of the mining sector. We also have a good mining sector with the diamond mines, but if people don’t have to live in the Northwest Territories and it’s easier if they can be flown out of the South, then I guess they have that option of doing that. So I’d like to ask the Minister of ITI, have we regressed from the original commitment we had with the diamond companies with respect to incentives and inducements to keep people in the North. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Concerning the SEAs, we had come up with an MOU with the three diamond mines. That MOU expired last year. We’re currently in the process of trying to replace that MOU. I’ve had the opportunity now as the Minister of ITI, to sit down with the three head folks at the diamond mines and we have to chart a course forward when it comes to replacing that MOU, and I fully intend on doing that and including my colleague, the Minister of Health and Social Services, and my colleague, the Minister of ECE, in a way forward on that. Thank you.

We are, I’m sure, aware of the challenges faced by these companies, as well, in attracting and recruiting people to work for them, regardless of whether they live in the North or the South, just getting the manpower or the labour force that they need to operate their mines. But I’d like to ask the Minister, in his discussions with the three diamond mines, is it his sense that they are aware of our plight in the need to see more benefit from these resources that we are extracting from our territory and the absolute advantages of having these folks live in the North. Thank you.

Thank you. They’re acutely aware of that and I believe wholeheartedly

that they’d like nothing more than to see the majority of their workforce take up residence here in the Northwest Territories. However, the reality is, and I just returned from an FTP meeting in Goose Bay, Labrador, where the economy is red hot in Labrador, as well, and the representative from the province of Alberta mentioned to the Ministers at that meeting that in four years’ time the province of Alberta is going to have a 77,000 person deficit when it comes to skilled tradespeople in the province of Alberta, and that’s just in Alberta. There are many areas around the country nowadays where people can choose to live where they want to live and go to the work, and that unfortunately is the reality that we’re in. That’s the hill that we have to climb and I think we really need to start thinking about how we’re going to retain the people that we have. I think that should be front and centre as well. Thank you.

Thank you. So apart from the pressure that we could put on industry to try and have their people live and work in the North through inducements and incentives for their employees, what kind of a campaign do we have to try and communicate to people? I mean, we obviously love it here in the North. What kind of campaign do we have as a government to show people the kind of lifestyle, unique lifestyle that they can have here in the Northwest Territories? The Spectacular NWT is a wonderful campaign; you know, a nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there. Or does it say come and see us and live here? Thank you.

Thank you. We have had the Make Your Mark campaign that has been doing a great deal of work in eastern Canada and trying to tell people about the opportunities that are here in the Northwest Territories. Many people that currently live in a city like Yellowknife have roots in eastern Canada. We need to do everything we can to ensure that we’re putting out the welcome mat.

We’re looking across the country for people that want to move and live here in the Northwest Territories, but we’ve got a couple of hurdles again that we need to get over and one of those hurdles is the cost of living. When surveys are done with the mine workers that are on site, the main focus is the cost of living here in the Northwest Territories as compared to the South. That’s an obstacle that we have to try to continue to pursue and get over.

The other obstacle is if you look here in the city of Yellowknife with a vacancy rate of 0.6 percent, there aren’t too many houses on the market. We really need to do something with the City of Yellowknife, free up some land and get some housing developments started so that there are places. If we’re going to try to attract people to live here, we need to have houses for them to live in. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Lots of houses for sale in Hay River. I just thought I’d throw that in there.

One of the other things that we’ve seen is with the mining companies that come in here. They have trained our northern people, they have employed our northern people, but it is even easier for them to go live in St. Albert or Spruce Grove. We’ve had out-migration. One of the side effects of our people getting jobs at the mine is that they say, you know what, it’s easier to live in Spruce Grove than it is to live in Behchoko, and we’ve had out-migration as a result of that.

What can we do about this? Where is the campaign to try as a government to encourage people not only to move here but to also stay here? Thank you.

Thank you. We need to really look at communities like Hay River, like Fort Smith, like Fort Simpson and try to see how moving forward we can attract people to live in the Northwest Territories. If there are opportunities for people to live in a community like Hay River, Fort Smith or Fort Simpson, we need to gear up and we need to come up with a way to try to attract people to do that.

We’re continuing on with the Make Your Mark campaign and as we move forward it’s certainly my intention to try to keep as many people here in the North as we can and attract as many people as we can.

I look forward to working with the Regular Members on the opposite side of the House to ensure that we are doing everything in our power to ensure that that happens, and that includes working with industry. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I stand here before you not just as the MLA for Range Lake but as a health care professional who’s been practicing here in the North for over 20 years and serving not only the needs of Yellowknife but pretty much the needs of all of the Northwest Territories and prior to 1999, Nunavut as well. So I stand here before you today as someone who I think has got a lot of vast experience when it comes to prescription drugs and health care.

I will not deny the fact that illicit drug use, tobacco, alcohol, these are all serious addictions out there that we see every day, and I don’t want to take anything away from those addictions out there, but

what I was talking about in my Member’s statement earlier today is what I like to refer to as the quiet addiction. This is the addiction we don’t talk about as much, because we talk about the other ones that have so much more press time and media attention. That’s narcotic and opiate dependence that leads to dependency as well as addiction.

This is a serious issue that tends to go quietly and unannounced, and again, when you’re trying to get information about it, there is nothing out there. So I was very concerned when trying to look for information about it. We statistically have nothing out there to lead by. So my question for the Minister of Health here today is: Why is the department not looking more into the addictions of prescription narcotic abuse and why is this information not available to the people of the Northwest Territories?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The information is not available because the department does not track use of opiates. However, we do have the NWT Pharmacy Act which will give us the power to set up the regulations, but we don’t have the funding to set it up. Health Canada does track non-insured health benefits prescription use, if they’re going to that program to purchase the prescription drugs; but if they pay cash, we don’t track that either. Thank you.

Thank you. I appreciate the Minister for giving reference to the act. There’s no doubt that the topic of addictions is a high topic for the Members on this side of the House. You can only count on many hands how many times this has been brought up even in this Assembly here. But the idea about addictions is understanding where you start. We talked about emerging addiction areas; well, I don’t want to use the word emerging because I believe this has been around here not only for the short period but it’s been around here for a very long period of time. Given what was said here today and the response from the Minister, can myself as a Member and the people of the Northwest Territories get some reassurance and assurances that this information can be statistically gathered in the very near future? Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, through regulations we can gather the information. However, at this time, like I said, we haven’t gone through the act to gather the information. I’m told that information can be gathered. The electronic medical health records that we are starting to use now allows us to gather information in Yellowknife and Hay River at this time. We need to expand the electronic medical health records right across the Territories as a first step if we’re going to track all the prescription drug use across the Territories. For

now we are capable of tracking in Yellowknife and Hay River.

Again I appreciate the Minister’s response on that. Can the Minister or his department give some idea of the timelines when these regulations might be altered or amended so that we can gather information throughout the Territories? As I said, this is not just isolated to urban Northwest Territories; I believe this issue is prevalent everywhere. Having an understanding of the timeline would definitely help prepare, with respect to addictions.

We will be working with our partners at the Bureau of Statistics. We’re going to include questions on prescription drug use the next time we do addictions surveys, the general addictions survey. That survey is scheduled to begin in late 2012.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.

No further questions, Mr. Speaker.

The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.