Mr. Speaker, I know we have to put the programs and services into place for all languages. However, we do have a couple of languages that are close to extinction here, specifically the Gwich’in language. We have some in the South Slave. Will the Minister see those results and put the emphasis and priorities to address those languages and cultures first, before moving on to the ones that are already doing well in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. It is in regards to the Minister’s statement that he mentioned yesterday and working to increase the number of Aboriginal language speakers, provide employment opportunities for elders and improve educational opportunities for our Aboriginal students.

Mr. Speaker, with this whole work plan in place, I wanted to ask the Minister, will he give priority to those languages that are being detrimentally declining over the last few years. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday we had a Minister’s statement regarding Aboriginal languages and revitalization into our Aboriginal languages across the Northwest Territories. I wanted to briefly touch on that today. It really sparked my interest, and being someone who

doesn’t speak their language, it’s something that I want to see brought forward over the next four years so that by the end of four years I’ll be able to stand here and do a Member’s statement in Gwich’in, and that some of our colleagues can do the same thing.

Aboriginal languages are the foundation of northern cultures. They define Aboriginal peoples, they describe northern values and beliefs, and they provide the framework through which northern people express their views and their visions. This was an opening address made by the Honourable Jackson Lafferty, Minister of ECE, in a report that was brought out in 2010. He also goes on to state that if nothing is done, we will lose our Aboriginal languages. As stated, I would like to see that this government moves forward into some of the work that the Minister is doing, along with Members on this side, so that these languages can be revitalized. In a briefing that was done earlier in this government, we noticed that languages across the Northwest Territories – it’s not just the Gwich’in language, not the Inuvialuktun language – all languages are declining and that needs to be addressed and fixed, as I mentioned.

Not only languages. We’re speaking about culture here. We’re talking about dance. We’re talking about music. We’re talking about all things that are associated with culture that can bring our people stronger so that they’re proud to be Northerners, proud of their cultures. That’s something that I want to see brought forth within the next four years and get stronger each and every year as we move forward.

Later today I will be having some questions for the Minister of ECE in regard to his Minister’s statement yesterday, and how we can move forward on this and start addressing some of the priorities in terms of the languages that have really declined and are in an emergency situation. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, will not be in support of the motion. Obviously seeing it is a big project that is going to affect my region that I represent and it’s going to be great news for the people back home and the jobs there it is going to create is going to be a lot of happy people up there. Just seeing what it’s going to start off with in the creation of the Mackenzie Valley Highway, where I stated earlier is going to be a lot of work to come for years down the valley.

I also just wanted to also commend the government on our Caucus priorities, something that we did earlier in this government. It is great to see that we’ve already started hitting some of these priorities that we’ve recognized, such as the working with Aboriginal governments. You are doing a good job on that to be taking the first steps moving forward and getting this Inuvik-Tuk highway and building the infrastructure there. It just shows that this government is standing behind what it says it is going to do. Over the next four years, we can start looking at our priorities and dealing with them and that people of the NWT will start to have faith that we do say we are going to get done.

We do have to make some tough decisions whether we agree with them or not. Most of the time when we make these tough decisions it always has to be in the best interests for the territory, for looking into the future of what it is going to represent for the territory as a whole. There have been some really good debates over the last few days. It really opened my eyes into the whole government system on how things work here. I look forward to the next three and a half years of working with these people, Members here on this side and that side of the House to ensure that our Caucus priorities that we

did recognize earlier in this government actually we follow through with them.

I think right now we are off to a great start and in terms of this motion that is before us, I won’t be supporting that and moving forward so that our priorities are addressed. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just in regard to what’s been talked about so passionately is the Inuvik-Tuk highway here. Being a newly elected MLA, one of the main things that I’ve been seeing in my office lately is the increase of income support and people who are looking for jobs. I get a lot of phones calls in that regard and one way that I find that we can fix this is building a big project such as the Inuvik-Tuk highway. It gets my support in the sense that we have a lot of strong leaders in the region who are backing this, and when you have so much passion from some strong leaders, you know

that a project like this will be successful and they would find a way to get it done.

Speaking to some of the comments that were made earlier, we do have a timeline. There is a short timeline to pass this bill, but there’s a timeline that we have to get this infrastructure built and we can’t lose that year. If you look in some of our other documents that we were discussing over the past couple of days, our income support has gone up close to a million dollars. The way we can look at addressing that issue is to start creating jobs for our Northerners. In discussions with people back home, our main contractor is going to be our local businesses and our local contractors doing the jobs and making sure that both Aboriginal groups are represented in these jobs when they go forward both this year and in the new fiscal year.

We’ve had our briefings. We’ve had our discussions with the Minister of Finance and the Minister of ITI. We’ve had a lot of questions, had a lot of discussions with some really strong debates, and we do have to put a little bit of money forward for this due diligence so that, like the Minister said, we decide from there if we want to go ahead with this if this road is feasible or not. I think that’s where this first step needs to take place and not wait another year and then see that it’s something that we want to go ahead and do. We should do it now and we should get the support of the Members to look at getting our people in our region off of income support and into jobs, the ones that do want to work.

As a colleague of mine said earlier, it’s going to create jobs for years. It’s going to create jobs not only in the Beaufort-Delta but right down the Mackenzie Valley for all the communities. It’s going to increase communications and it’s going to increase our people getting together and being one territory.

I know we will be getting into detail later and there will be some strong questions, questions that have already been asked and questions that have already been answered. I think that we’ll wait for those details to come up with some conclusions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My written question is for the Minister of Public Works and Services.

1. Can the Minister provide an inventory of

Government of the Northwest Territories infrastructure currently available in the communities of Inuvik, Fort Simpson and Norman Wells that could house alcohol and drug treatment centres?

2. Can the Minister provide current operations and

maintenance costs for these buildings?

I appreciate the answer that the Minister has given me. I’d just like to ask when can I receive that information, at a prompt time, as I do have a lot of constituents who are still waiting on that hip replacement surgery. Thank you.

Does that include the joint replacement surgeries as well? Because it’s been a long time since August. We’ve been about six months. That means we should be getting some of our people in the Northwest Territories through

those surgery rooms and getting those replacements, especially the hip replacement surgeries. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a question following up from a question that I had in previous sessions to the Minister of Health and Social Services, and that’s regarding the backlog and the delay, or the on-hold situation that we have for our joint replacement surgeries. I just want to get an update from the Minister of Health on the progress of those surgeries. Just an update to see where the department is on those. Thank you.