Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The indemnification that occurred is a normal part of business and part of that is the requirement to notify Members 14 days in advance, I think is the crux of the matter here, but that is a normal part of the process. There wasn’t an extra decision to not provide that. So it was just a part of normal process and through our many briefings to committee, Members were aware that this indemnification occurred. Thank you.

Thank you. The area of the Food Mail Program, again, as a government department we’ve handled it through a number of departments in the past. At this point, through Minister Lee’s office she has the charge of working with the groups on this and any information or concerns that people have, or Members have on that and communities, we can pool that together and through her office make the connection and raise those concerns. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The food mail issue has indeed been raised here a number of times in past sessions and during this session. We worked and supported the work of many groups in the North to have that program reviewed by the federal government. It’s our understanding, through Minister Lee’s office, that they are going to delay implementation of the new program for a year, is my understanding. Thank you.

The departments that request a negotiated contract and those contracts that are agreed to, there is a reporting process by the departments back to Cabinet. So there is a report that’s required.

I guess the overall target of the Government of the Northwest Territories, as raised in this House a number of times, is to try to build capacity in the industry in the Northwest Territories amongst our businesspeople, whether Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal, birthright corporations and so on. We’ve done that and we use a number of tools. Negotiated contracts is one of those.

Some of the difficulty we have is when in the same community or region there is, in a sense, a competition. When you have two Aboriginal companies requesting negotiated contracts it becomes problematic. We use the tools...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to welcome my constituents to this House: Charlie and Ann Kasook, and as was recognized earlier, Ann’s commitment to our community. I can remember a long time ago, it seems like almost 15, close to 16 years ago, some of my first meetings, Ann called me in to talk about the transition house and the help they needed. So keep up the good work and thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we’ve done our work around the previous draft Hydro Strategy and beginning to look at that strategy once again, the issues of connectivity in the grid, to greenhouse gases, to helping reduce the cost of living are all those pieces that will be looked at as we look forward to a solution that will work for an expansion to the Taltson.

One of the interesting areas we began to look at prior to division and leading up to division of the Northwest Territories and the creation of Nunavut was we started the geographic tracking of our costs in our Territory at the territorial, regional and community level. This government picked that up and is using that to look at where we benefit our communities as well. We try to use as many tools as we can in measuring our impact in communities both large and small and will continue to look at that type of information as we look at designing our programs and how they benefit our communities.

Yes, we do have quite a number of programs, as I touched base earlier on, in trying to stimulate the economy. Just the announcement earlier today by the Minister of Transportation on the Community Access Program, expanding that because we see the good work it does in many of our communities. We do look at the socio-economic factors. That is why, for example, under Executive we’ve extended services into our small and remote communities under the CSO, or community service officer, positions to try to get as much information about programs to people across the Territory. When you look at our...

The work that’s being done with the consultations that need to go out, with the work with Members of this Assembly, all the avenues I think we’ve had discussions about will be looked at in one degree or another, but the final product needs to go through our system of working with committee members and getting feedback from the residents of the Northwest Territories.