EdinburghNLP/nunavut-hansard-plusplus huggingface dataset:
Which is our commitment as part of our identifying the Government and operations in Nunavut.
You can keep asking questions until they are finished.
You are very generous to me today.
You must have got a good Easter.
On another topic is.
I do not know if anyone else has experienced it but in my region there is a little frustration with the role where this Department is going and what it is doing.
People are confused between the Land Claim Agreement and their roles financially and the roles of this Government.
We all know that the Land Claim was settled for 580 million dollars and people set aside.  NTI set aside a certain dollar amount that was used for the beneficiaries only to start up small business.
Incidentally, I have to disagree with my colleagues Davidee that Inuit are ignorant.
If you look around they are running very successful business now.
Canadian North, NTCL, SIR, Nunasi.
If you look in the Kitikmeot you have the Development Corporations.
In the Keewatin you have Development Corporations.
Over here you have the Qikiqtani Inuit Association and stuff like that.
I think they made very wise investments.
Ten or fifteen years from now they will probably be up there with the Royal Bank and organisations like that.
So there have been very successful businesses in Nunavut and they are continuing to grow.
Yes there is controversy in business.
All masses anywhere in society feels they are being trotted by big business.
I do not think it is different up here.
However, getting back to what he was talking about.
I agree fully with him and I run into that frustration all the time from people in the street, on the complicated process that is involved in starting a small business.
Sometimes it is easier to start a larger business than it is a small business because of the paper involved and the planning and things like that.
I for one say ok you should not throw money at a person who wants to start a business because you set them up to fail.
Put I know where he is coming from.
There are many people out there who have good ideas.
Whether it is setting up a small carving business, a dried fish or dried meat business, a wall hanging business, a taxi business or whatever.
Clam digging business.
There seems to be a myriad of bureaucracy that we throw at them.
We have CEDOs in every community and most cases they are bilingual.
They are starting to be better at administering programs now they have in the past.
I can speak for region that I come from.
There are some very good people at the local level involved.
The CIP program is working effectively as well.
I know my frustration comes from when an individual, a unilingual individual goes into an office.
They come out more perplexed than most people because of what we have.
To our benefit the bilingual people in many cases do help.
I know in my region there is a quite a few bilingual people that help the unilingual people.
Most of the time it is just to answer the questions and things like that.
It is information that people need.
We are suffering from a high unemployment rate even the larger communities as the smaller communities.
We have more people in our schools then many these communities have in their population.
I have to deal with that coming from a community with a high unemployment rate.
So I can understand what my colleagues says when they a lot of paper and stuff like that.
It may not be very complicated what they have to do but to have the resources there to make it easier for them to apply or just not discourage them.
Let them know what they are getting involved in before they go off on a wild goose chase and spend three weeks trying to set up their meat drying business or something like that.
The department can look to the Hamlets can look or the Government can look at if it is a small business under 30 thousand dollars a year or 25 thousand dollars a year.
It should be very simplified for them and not get into GST and taxes things like that.
If there is someway we can assist the very small individual that want to make a seasonal business.
It may be supplying fish to a hotel.
We all know what that is like trying to get a permit for them to do that.
For a business licence and a grant they need a 5 thousand dollar grant.
What they have to go through.
It is just little people out there probably appreciate a small grant or a loan just to get going so.
I am going to sit here for another three years hoping that their lot will get a little bit better in Nunavut because we have promised them that.
I really do not need any comments.
I think I got my message through to you people.
The partnership policies and programs.
I fail to accept them yet for some reason.
Part of the reason why I fail to accept these programs is that it is confusing again. To a point where we get this money transferred through third party funding from the Federal Government but there seems to be another bunch of hoops and stuff people have to jump through and most of it goes back.
I was talking to a person in Yellowknife last year and he says Glenn there is 11 million dollars available.
You are probably going to use six or seven.
So 5 million dollars goes back to the Federal Government.
It does not go back because they never gave it to us. But it is there for us to use.
Their comment was if you do not use it you are going to loose it.
It is probably because of the bureaucratic shuffle again.
The Federal Governments historically throw up everything they can because they design their programs for where the high unemployment is in Southern Canada.
They sometimes try to transplant them here.
It does not work but they try to make them work.
I think this Government has to bend a bit.
The Nunavut Job Corp. I really would like to see that again.
I think that was a good initiative.
It helped.
Here again the smaller communities that are not affected by decentralization.
This would be a benefit to them.
I come from a decentralized community.
We are getting 40-50 jobs.
We got 16 hundred people and I am getting.
We got 600 students in the schools.
Fifty jobs is a drop in the bucket.
That is not going to do it.
It is going to be the mining sector, it is going to be the tourism sector, it is going to be a diversified economy that creates a healthy community.
I think I can speak for many communities.
It has to be a diversified economy to make it healthy.
Like the smaller communities like Clyde River or Arctic Bay or something like that.
It can not be just one thing it has to be two or three little things.
I hope the department will focus and I do not want to put all the emphasis on your department Minister Kilabuk because you are a small part of the solution.
You have the least amount of money to have to come up with the biggest group of answers.
I know the members will be here to question the Premier on what they are going to get for the smaller communities that are not affected by decentralization.
But we have to do a little bit more concentration on this.
I hope your forum going into those communities and how you can help them because I genuinely feel for them too.
Because we know unemployment affects all of us in Nunavut.
Not just the smaller communities or the larger communities.
I hope this can come up with a plan working with the community to develop some sort of job strategy in the Nunavut Job Corp could basically help there.
Along with a bit more money but into tourism training, job development because I know these communities out there.
I do not want to say who they are.
They have a lot to offer in regards to their size and what they can do and seasonal work means a lot.
I know when people make two, three or five thousand dollars at a seasonal job it means a lot to them because it may be a down payment on a snow machine or an outboard motor.
I will be saving myself for some questions later.
Taima. No response. No answer.
At this time we would like to have a short break because we made great progress and we will have a break for a 10 minutes.
>> Committee recessed 4:57 and resumed 5:11 p.m.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you for returning. Mr. Alakannuark.
I am sorry I forgot my question.
The communities that want to take on commercial fishing. I wonder how a commercial fisherman would ask to be assisted in a way of funding.
For example perhaps to the Hunters and Trappers Association or would they go other departments.
Would they go to your department to ask for some assistance to get started on commercial fishing.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Alakannuark. Mr. Minister.
The commercial fisherman in Nunavut. If they want to start up a business in commercial fishing they would go to economic development officers in the communities. If they want to pursue commercial fishing.
The economic development officers would give us information as to who would like to start commercial fishing in the communities.
Yes thank you for the response.
I just want to make a comment for those communities that are less populated, the communities that do not get decentralization.
For the larger communities that are getting decentralization employment, I feel that it is just a comment. Not a question. In the smaller communities they do not have any hunting equipment.
Perhaps because they have other equipment that are traditional but in bigger communities. Some Inuit people have less equipment for hunting.
Just using this as an example. We would like to help all the communities. In the Kitikmeot region larger communities some Inuit people do not have any equipment what so ever to hunt.
I can see the smaller communities have the same problem but at the same time they do more hunting than the larger communities.
They have more equipment in what I have seen.
But at the same time we have to help or assist support them all. Whether they are bigger communities or smaller communities.
That is just my comment at this time.
Mr. Minister Kilabuk.
This is not really a question but more like a comment.
Like many members I have mentioned it in the House. That the smaller communities will not be getting decentralised jobs and the Members wanted to know how they would be supported just like the larger communities.
We will consider the smaller communities as well as we considered the larger communities.
For them to plan their needs as well as the needs of the larger communities.
I have mentioned before that there is more than one community that we are doing planning for.
We have different ways of creating economy for each community.
Not just to the economy of the communities but also to provide some assistance for their hunting and to be able to provide for themselves by making money by hunting and other means.
For those smaller communities that do not have very much of hunting equipment. Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated has some money set aside to provide for their hunting equipment.
But they could get assistance if their application is approved.
The NTI has their own assistance program.
We would like to be able to help them as well. But we are working with those other agencies to provide them with funding when we are asked to assist the agencies that provide those kinds of funding.
The Department of Sustainable Development you know what kinds of funding that we have.
We have operations & maintenance total Government budget of 5 percent.
We do not have any extra money to provide for the Members comments.
We have been thinking about doing something to help those hunters that the Member is talking about.
We do not have any extra funding at this time.
We will not forget the communities. The smaller communities.
Chairperson (interpretation): Thank you, Mr. Kilabuk.
This is not really a question but a comment. In those communities that have sport hunting. They have to use the dog teams to go polar bear hunting.
Some communities are given the opportunity to get sport hunters to go out caribou hunting.
Sport hunting is very important to the communities for their economy. But there are many people that do not have dog teams in the communities.
Although some have. Sport hunting has to be open to every community.
We would like to give each community an opportunity to do sport hunting for their own economy so whoever wants to be involved in sports hunting and who can provide those services. So the people could have an economic base in their community.
I expect that if there is sport hunting available for all the people.
Chairperson (interpretation): That was just a comment but if Minister Kilabuk would like to make a brief comment on Mr. Alakannuark's comment.
When people in the communities take the sport hunters out polar bear hunting it is a very good economic base for the people of Nunavut.
It provides about 3 million dollars a year to the communities of Nunavut.
There are about 125 people in the Nunavut region at this time that provide sport hunting.
We have put aside 3 million dollars for sports hunters for the Nunavut residents.
I have two questions for the minister.
The first question is, in the business plans of Sustainable Development I understand that there is money for advertising for arts and crafts.
Will the arts and crafts made by local people be displayed through advertising to people that might be prospective buyers.
We know that there are people that are buying arts and crafts from the communities and some communities do not have any opportunity to do this.
So we have set aside some funding to advertise the sale of arts and crafts in the communities.
The reason I asked is because sometimes the people that bring their crafts to the Co-op, and this is an economic base for some of the people in the communities, I just wondered if we would have any problems with the Co-ops if we were to sell to other people.
Do they just purchase, I am just thinking about the Co-op that should be provided with the selling of arts and crafts in the communities.
The government will not compete with the Co-ops or other agencies to sell those arts and crafts made by the people in the communities.
I just wanted to say that the arts and crafts that we do sell at this time are just for the sake of advertising at this time.
Yes, thank you very much for the response and I will not worry about this any more.
The other item was already mentioned by Mr. Alakannuark.
Our community has a lot of fish, lots of arctic char and I know that there are other communities that have a lot of arctic char.
They used to have commercial fishing in the Igloolik area but today the commercial fishing is not being utilized enough.
They just go fishing for their own use.
I just wondered whether a study has been done to see which provinces or places or businesses would like to purchase fish to sell in the restaurants.
I wonder whether Ottawa has made any request, I know that there is a lot of demand for arctic char for marketing in the other centres.
I used to work for Fisheries and Oceans, and I will just answer on their behalf.
The business of marketing fish is running very well in some communities and not very well in other communities.
Just as an example, for those people that do commercial fishing, the people that want to buy them are in need of those kinds of fish and we are looking into subsidizing the freight for those commercial fishermen.
We have not done any review on the market, or the people that would like to buy those fish from the communities.
We have heard the problems that the communities we encountering in regards to the high cost of living or the high cost of freight when they want to ship their fish to be bought in the south, even though there is a lot of fish in the communities.
The Pangnirtung Fish plant, does that plant buy fish from other communities.
At this point I am no longer working at the fish plant so I cannot tell you what they do at this point.
When I used to be at the Pangnirtung fish plant, when appropriate we were able to get some fish from the surrounding communities as long as there was a market for them, but at this time I cannot answer you.
I am not saying that I am blaming the fish plant, but perhaps according to my thoughts the fish plant in Pangnirtung, no wonder it has to be a viable business.
They requested that all the fish that is sold commercially in the Baffin region has to go through the fish plant in Pangnirtung.
Ever since then, in Hall Beach and Igloolik, ever since that fish plant was established it was even harder for the fishermen to sell their fish.
I do not know whether this has been a good idea, but that has been my thought so therefore I asked it.
If you would like to respond I will leave that up to you Mr. Minister.
Yes, I can only talk about the past operations of the fish plant.
For the communities that are not adjacent to Pangnirtung if they tried to send their arctic char it would have been too expensive to send it by freight.
At this point marketing the arctic char from Nunavut to the south, the health regulations and inspectors are very rigid.
The people who buy the fish want to get the best fish that has never been frozen, they want it as fresh as it can be.
I know that they would like to buy more fish in some parts of the year so there are different reasons but the communities if they would like to apply for funding for fisheries we have no choice but to look at their application.
Yes that is entirely true that the food regulations are very powerful and rigid.
I know that since I have seen it myself.
Mr. Irqittuq do you have any further comments.
Commercial fisheries and the arctic char, when you take them down south and when you make a trip down south, many southerners would like to buy arctic char and they have a large interest in it.
Perhaps you can do a study or a review as to who we can market the arctic char to.
For example, the big fisheries plants would like to buy a certain kind of fish.
Perhaps if you can do a review as to where we can market the arctic char.
There are various problems that we encounter.
We do want to do a review and we need to train the people on how to handle fish properly.
Because we did not have the staff capacity to do that last year, as I have stated before, I would like to see a new position in the department who can work on the fisheries and sealing side.
The position was advertised in regards to the questions that you are posing, and I know that the issues that you are questioning could be included in the position responsibilities.
I know that due to a lack of capacity I had requested that there be a new position established within our department so that person could look into the sealing and fisheries side.
When it was with the previous government, the GNWT, when the hunters injured themselves or were injured they were able to apply for Workers' Compensation or to insure their equipment.
However, within the Department of Sustainable Development the budget says…(interpretation ends)…hunters and trappers to replace the equipment lost as a result of natural disaster.
(interpretation) That is what it says but it is only 15 thousand dollars budgeted for that purpose.
Last year there was no funding but this is 15 thousand dollars.
Mr. Chairman, if my brand new skidoo went through the ice and I were to replace that skidoo it would cost about 10 thousand dollars.
This 15 thousand dollars is only good for one person as disaster compensation.
Aren't you going to increase that amount or is this just an initial stage.
I know that it is small and I agree with you.
In spite of that we have not received any applications as of yet for disaster compensation.
If there was compensation for some accident the policies were inherited from the GNWT.
For example if they lost their goods because of weather, that is what this disaster compensation is geared towards, natural disasters.
I have been working with my staff to review how we can improve this or come up with different options.
At this point in time, because we have requested people that can work on this issue, we are reviewing it at this point to find out who would be the most capable person to work on compensation.
The policy was inherited from the GNWT and does not reflect Nunavut.
This 15 thousand dollars is only enough for one person to buy one snowmobile or to buy hunting equipment.
I find that this is very small, looking at the 26 communities of Nunavut and looking at the number of hunters that we have.
I know that once these hunters realize that they can apply for this compensation I know that they will say that this amount is too small.
It has occurred that more than one hunter has lost equipment at the same time.
It is already evident that this figure is going to be too small.
Perhaps the minister could consider in the future increasing that amount or perhaps request other departments to provide further funding for this particular item.
I was wondering if he was willing to increase this sometime in the future.
Perhaps you and I will be fighting over that.
Before everybody fights over that, yes, I knew that this amount was much too small.
If we had lost three or four snowmobiles, then this amount would already be too small.
This is already in our proposed review and I know that within our department if we are going to be including that compensation part that is the only way we can proceed with that is if we receive support from the other departments.
In our reviews that have been done, for example, if we budgeted 100 thousand dollars here I would have a concern. If we are going to make this funding available just like that, the hunters might put themselves in danger because they know that they will be compensated if they lose their hunting equipment.
That's the kind of question that I ask myself, if they lost their snowmobile for example, through thin ice the hunter would know that he would be compensated if he lost his skidoo.
That is why I am a bit leery about as I have stated before.
Perhaps if we can look at insurance rather than compensation I think it would be more beneficial.
But it is already going to be reviewed.
As I have stated before this is not the last and final decision.
We will be able to make a final decision only after the results have come in from the final report.
I agree with the minister and we understand, it became a little bit clearer when we realised that our hunting equipment and we became aware that there is insurance required on hunting equipment and so on.
But then again there was a problem, Mr. Chairman.
When some of the hunters lost their equipment they tried to get their money back and the only response that we got from our government is that the money set aside for compensation was used for chartering airplanes to look for the hunters.
Therefore there was no more money available to pay for the hunters who lost their equipment.
Is that still going to be the case with this present government.
For example, if they were provided gas would the response be that there was no money available because the money was used to buy gasoline.
If I understood the member correctly, the money set aside for compensation, I believe his question was whether we were going to have the same practices as the past government.
This money is not for search and rescue.
We will have to find other money to pay for those types of operations.
My question, as I have not seen any figures in front of me for the soapstone quarries.
Some of them are getting very dangerous and I am sure that the soapstone quarries between Kimmirut and Cape Dorset are not the only ones that are dangerous.
My question is, do you have any money set aside for soapstone quarry sites so that they will be in safe conditions or would you have any money to be made available if an emergency case arose.
Or if the soapstone quarries became a safety issue, would there be any money to be used for reviewing those soapstone quarry sites.
For soapstone we have set aside some money through the Community Initiatives Program.
Last year we spent about 37 or 38 thousand dollars for quarrying.
The major portion of the money was used in the Keewatin region but they are provided money.
One of the concerns that we have is the safety of those soapstone quarry sites.
Because of that we are reviewing those sites.
We have safety issues that have to be considered and we are reviewing whether to insure the carvers just like the regular work force.
They do need to have soapstone made available to them.