Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to make my comments to the Minister and I want to thank the Minister and his colleagues for the continuous efforts and push towards the new wellness centre in the Sahtu and the territorial long-term care facility and the exciting news about putting the training program and what we need to do to get that operational, off the ground and put forward to having some sort of ceremony, maybe this summer, to kick-start the excitement, and the previous Minister also was involved with that. I want to thank the department for their efforts to take my questions as I nag you through the system, because it is exciting and we want to make sure that it stays in the books and I thank the government for making those commitments.

In saying that, I would like to follow through this venue here, another venue that the Tulita health centre has been in the planning books. I know there is one last piece of detail that we have to look at before we start looking for money for the Tulita wellness centre. I am just calling the Metis right now in Tulita, because that is where the letter went, to see where things are at. I know that there was a meeting set up to see what we have to do to maintain that piece of infrastructure on the books, given all our other infrastructures that we wish to have. I wanted to thank the Minister for keeping that also on the radar here.

Mr. Chair, I do want to say that the issue that I talked somewhat to the Minister on not too much, but one that I brought to his attention is that we have elders that fly out of our small communities. They come down to Yellowknife or Edmonton for medical services and the way the airline operates and the timing is not conducive to some of our elders. The ones I am speaking about are ones in wheelchairs or walkers, or are fairly old and fragile. Because of the airline schedule, sometimes these elders have to stay at the Norman Wells Airport for an extended period of time. I was asking if the departments operations and maintenance can look at an elder who has cancer goes for treatment or elders who are with walkers or disabled, that they could be put in a place where they can rest. Work with the health centre in Norman Wells so they can

have a place where they can rest, have something to eat, have some tea, watch some TV maybe, but not just stay at the Norman Wells Airport for two or three or four hours. We are young, so we can handle it, right Minister? So, we look out for most of the elderly people. That is what I would like to look at and go to. It is not going to be all the time, it is when these elders have to come to Norman Wells to catch a flight south. That is what I am asking for. I have run into some incidents where some of our elders have been staying at the airport for five hours. I am not too sure if they ate or had any tea or they were looked after. It makes me sad to see how we treat them, so I asked the Minister if he would put a little effort into looking at something like that, where he could make it work. It would be on a case-by-case basis. Just so that elders that have cancer, they could go to a place, so I ask for some civility, I guess, to see what we can do there.

In Tulita we have people over 60 years of age. There are 74 of them, according to my stats here. In Deline we have 54; Colville Lake, 16; Fort Good Hope we have 64, and in Norman Wells we have 85 people who are 60 and over.

In doing my homework here, these elders that I listed off, in Colville Lake 94 percent of people consume food from the land. In Good Hope and Deline, 77 percent; in Tulita, 79 percent; in Norman Wells, 29 percent. I say this for a reason, Mr. Chairman, because of these high percentages of numbers where our people consume food from the land, so that goes to the point I want to talk about. I want to talk about food that is offered in our health centres.

In Stanton Hospital, I know the Minister is working on that. In any facility now that we have elders in, like the Aven Manor, or up in Inuvik, or Simpson maybe, in our hospitals, these elders grew up from eating food on the land. There is a health benefit also to it. I know you have the Aboriginal wellness council going pretty strong and pretty forceful, and I like to see where the Aboriginal patients have a direct access to getting food from the land served to them by our government. It should be representative, just like we have a policy where we have employees representing the population. So if there’s 65 percent Aboriginal people, we should have at least 65 percent of Aboriginal foods in the hospitals, not 5 percent or 10 percent or whatever. Boiling fish is good, fish broth is good, ducks, geese, beaver, rats, they have to have all that food. That is what they grew up on, so we cannot deny them that. I wanted to raise that with the Minister to bring those numbers up. I do want to say to the Minister, I really, really support the Aboriginal Wellness Initiative, the directive, the on-the-land healing programs, all those good things that are going to plant the seed now. It is good that the department is listening now, we have dedicated money to those initiatives. For 10 years I have been

saying this, now we are finally starting to see. Now let’s give that a chance, let’s give it a whirl and see what we can do for our people.

I want to say to the Minister that the medical travel certainly needs to be something that is revamped and looked at for our people. I also want to say, on the same thing, medical travel has done some things that have helped my people also. I am not going to be too hard on them because they have done some things that I think have helped me, as a Member, in getting my people back home. So it is not all criticizing the system or the people in there, it is just what we have set up.

The issue that I want to raise, and the Minister certainly heard it from three of us a couple of days ago, is on increasing the nurse presence in our small communities. Without nurses, we don’t have any nursing in our communities and there are nine communities in the Northwest Territories. I look forward to a discussion paper, something that will say this is how or when we will want to get these communities on to the same level of health care as the rest of the communities in the Northwest Territories.

The challenge, and I know the Minister is up for a challenge, actually he has had some pretty good programs when he was working in it some time ago. I think that’s what I want to do too. Work hard for us. The budget is pretty good in the health field here and I certainly hope we have some further discussions on the federal government’s announcement on having money come to the Northwest Territories and how we’re going to use that money. That’s all I have to say, Mr. Chair. Thank you.