Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will commit to providing a letter that I will share with both reserves. Give me a little bit of time. I want to meet with the reserves first to make sure that it's the letter that they want because we are talking about advocating. Once we've met with both reserves and we know what we're going to bring forward to the federal government, I will stand beside them in that battle, and then we will provide a copy, as long as the reserves, I'm being careful now, agree that we can open it up, and we will provide a letter. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Agreed. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am pleased to present the 2019-2023 mandate for the Government of the Northwest Territories. This mandate is built on the priorities we set together as newly elected Members of the 19th Legislative Assembly in October 2019. Under the current process conventions, Members of the Executive Council discussed how we might implement these priorities in the best interest of all Northerners and in our current operating environment. I sat down with the standing committee in November and heard from each Member about the needs of our regions and communities, and the actions we...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We already have a mandate commitment that we will implement the United Nations declaration on the rights of Indigenous governments. I'm not sure if an AIP will strengthen that or not. What I do want to bring it back to is, the summer of 2020, the working group of Indigenous governments will sit around the table and talk about: what does this look like; what do we need to do?

It's not about divide and conquer. We can't even get 19 people in this room to agree on --- well, maybe, if we tried. We haven't fought on adjourning yet, but this is huge. This is so huge. To have...

Thank you, Madam Chair. We would make sure that we cover the full spectrum, because the Member is right. You're not going to just take any business. A lot of businesses fail very quickly, but we also have other programs, business development, incorporation, et cetera, that do specialize in that, so they'll be working hand in hand. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yes, it's GNWT only. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We have agreed to work with the NWT Association of Communities on this. There is a funding formula, but, in fairness, some communities, the $40 million gap is not across the board. Some communities, when they did the assessment, were above. Previous governments said they would be grandfathered. Is it fair that they get another share? Those are questions that we need to work with the association of communities on. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going to try this one more time. I tried to explain many times the other day that hiring and firing the employment contracts is separate than appointments. I will give some firmer examples. My job is to hire and decide termination of assistant deputy ministers, deputy ministers, et cetera. Ministers are allowed to appoint to positions such as boards, presidents, et cetera. I'm going to use an example that perhaps the Member can understand, because he was a Minister, I believe, for at least four years, of education. Within that, when that was happening, under the...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Absolutely, I agree to that. If you look at the timelines, I mean we're already talking about what you want to point out, Madam Chair. Just because we organized this pamphlet with housing number one and land claim number two does not mean those are our order of priorities. At no time did I hear any of the MLAs agree to which was priority 1 and which one was priority 22. My impression, every single one of these priorities is number one. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Like I said, we are working with the other territories so that we are a unified voice. There will be some action coming out of that, public announcements coming out of that. We will be doing a yearly reporting on these issues. What I would like to recommend, Madam Chair, is we are open to listening. If the Member or other Members want to come and provide suggestions, we are more than open to listening to that. Thank you, Madam Chair.