Floyd Roland

No, Mr. Chairman. Once we get some confirmation on this specific area we’ll be able to do that. What I would, I guess, put out now is that we will pull the work that we have done in the areas that we’ve worked. For example, some of this was an additional communications person that we have within Executive now that helps us and then there’s the internal coordinating and working group. The other thing we’ve done, for example, is our radio broadcasting working with Aboriginal languages and talking about in general our government messaging throughout a number of departments.

Mr. Chairman, the decision to sign the agreement-in-principle was brought forward to Cabinet, was brought forward to Members of this Assembly. The facts were put on the table. Knowing that there would be concerns raised about going forward on an agreement-in-principle, knowing there was the potential for litigation, we took all precautions to ensure we did our work right. By signing that agreement, I believe in the work that has been done. I believe we have covered our bases. I believe in the issue of bringing Northerners the authority to make decisions over development and to benefit from...

Mr. Chairman, the process that we have gone down in the past, as I said a number of times quite a number of years ago, funding has been provided by both the federal government and the Government of the Northwest Territories in assisting groups from their earliest days of the Intergovernmental Forum, the Aboriginal Summit and to the regional Aboriginal leadership meetings that we have established through the 16th Legislative Assembly. As following the AIP signing, sent a letter out to all the regions, and copied their leadership, inviting them to contact us to set up a process where we can set...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We’ll provide a list of the Metis locals and the funding that’s been applied. One of the things we have is a condition on the funding that they need to be in good standing with the societies and we’re finding many of the groups have now started signing up and getting their paper back in order. There are 17 in total, but we’ll get the information out on paper.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Earlier we discussed this area of the Stabilization Fund. There is a call that goes out annually. There are areas that are reviewed and the applications that go into four general areas, applications, regions of the NWT, the type of support being requested including management costs or governance costs, organizational development costs, extraordinary general operations costs, whether ongoing personal costs are being requested, and whether the proposed projects had not received support or where the same or similar of those supported last year for the same NGO. That doesn...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the Member is reverting back to his previous position as a negotiator on file, and, I mean, I respect the Member’s right to voice his concerns and advocate for the groups. I must say that we all represent communities and we’re elected to a public government and everyone in our communities. None of us are elected by one group specific, although, yes, there are significant people within our communities of one Aboriginal group or another.

Let’s go down the list, Mr. Chair. Norman Wells: two-thirds of that is under royalty regime. The groups that have signed the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have no persons who have declared a disability. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, the Government of the Northwest Territories supported the signing of the UN Declaration as an aspirational document. In fact, I understand that the federal government is now considering signing that same document. For ourselves, as the Government of the Northwest Territories, we are Aboriginal Affairs within the Government of the Northwest Territories and we ensure departments are following and fulfilling their obligations or informing them of those obligations and then we go to the appropriate department to hold them accountable to those agreements. As the Government of the...

I think that’s the unique feature of this regional leaders approach. It hasn’t been the Government of the Northwest Territories that sets the agenda; it is a collaborative approach. We ask every region if they have a specific item or issue that they want to have dealt with. In some cases, we’ve dealt with the education piece or the Water Strategy or the Wildlife Act, to a certain degree, about who’s going to be involved and not and can they put the right people to the table. In fact, one of the agenda items we had as a regular update was the agreement-in-principle and at some meetings there...

Again, the Northern Leaders’ Forum was a side table on Creating Our Future Together. The regional leaders’ table is the one we’re working with and reaching out to the regional leaders and community leaders on that. Quite clearly, as we’ve shown already, the Sahtu have not signed this agreement, but they wanted to have meetings where they brought the elders, youth and representatives from many of their communities to discuss the AIP and go over it. We’ve cost-shared the initial meeting and are looking at following up with an additional meeting that brings in the rest of their communities. One...