Floyd Roland

Our role as Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations is support to departments in ensuring that we meet our obligations. The role that we have within Executive will be, or the advice that we provide to Executive, and that’s where the budget and the work that we’ll initiate. For example, under development and mandates, as we go forward we would be involved to ensure that as those mandates are developed, that we are honouring our commitments of existing agreements and protecting those discussions that are ongoing right now. For example, some of the discussions that are ongoing there...

Mr. Chairman, when you look at the work that we have done on regional Aboriginal leadership meetings, when you look at the work done by previous governments around the Intergovernmental Forum, the Aboriginal Summit, those are the areas where we begin to build that foundation. In the life of this government, as I highlighted in my statement, there were 10 meetings we had. I would say that to judge the success of an initiative that is trying to undo decades of what some would say wrongdoing has been passed on from the federal government to past territorial governments in a matter of one stroke...

I guess clearly, for the record, because there’s been comments made by many since the signing and the idea of the signing to say that there’s been zero involvement. The facts speak for themselves. There has been involvement right from the Aboriginal Summit days through the hiring of consultants, lawyers, negotiators, through to even involvement in this last year by a number of the groups to either be at the table, to hear what’s being said and to make comments there or to be as a full participant at that table to do the work that’s necessary to get the right language in.

Going forward on a...

Mr. Chairman, we will give you a list of the contracts we have with Aboriginal Affairs. If the Member asked me a question in the House about contracts with others through other areas of responsibility, I would be able to provide him an affirmative at that time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To my left is Penny Ballantyne, Cabinet secretary. To my right is Mr. David Stewart, ADM of Executive operations.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Earlier in Executive there is a devolution file that holds the resources. For example, hiring chief negotiators and assistant negotiators as well as supplementing some of our legal issues. Our role as Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations in the work, as the Member has highlighted, with our key role in many of the negotiations around the Northwest Territories is a key one. We have a committee of deputies that are involved in the devolution discussions and Ms. Sparling sits as part of that group and ensures that as we go through that work that, for example...

Mr. Chairman, for the most part right now what we use as guiding principles are the key features document and the federal government’s self-government policy. That is what we work off of and then mandates are developed around that as we talked about, many of those being redone. The government’s framework will be an internal document used by governments as we set up our mandates and look at that framework. Policy then potentially could be developed that would be a public document like our Negotiated Contracts Policy where we would set out some of those principles that would be incorporated into...

I guess one of the things, we have looked at all of these and a number of these negotiations have to occur to bring final clarity as to the roles and responsibilities, but clearly, if you look at chapter 5, Transfer of Responsibilities, existing rights, 5.3, the transfer of administration on control of public lands and rights in respect of waters to the Commissioner, pursuant to Section 5.1 shall not: (a) affect any existing right or interest or trust including any existing interest in respect of public lands; (b) affect any existing right including any existing interest in respect of waters...

Mr. Chairman, I wouldn’t say we hire consultants. What we have hired in contracts for example under Creating Our Future, we have hired a writer. We have hired facilitators to do that work. As I pointed out earlier, when we have our office position in Ottawa take annual leave, we have to hire temporary staff there as well. Thank you.

The simple fact is that I’ve said many times in this House, and the Member may call it procrastinating, but I’ve talked about the fact that if it’s the will of this Assembly when we do initiatives, then we’ll look at how we put them in place. The transition documents we would be working on together. If it’s the will of the Assembly, we’ll be prepared to look at that.