Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know Members have called on us to establish an additional position to have for dealing directly with non-government organizations. We make a distinction between the volunteer sector as well as the NGOs. We have, in a sense, through the Department of Executive, been taking on the NGO file around the Stabilization Fund and dealing with the non-government organizations. I’ll ask Ms. Ballantyne to make some comments on this.

The other thing that wasn’t highlighted was the regional Aboriginal leaderships meetings funding and processes held within the Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations and a number of our meetings that we had, especially leading up to the AIP, were funded directly through this shop. When it comes to having groups sign on, I mean, I think a number of them have highlighted their reluctance to sign on for a number of reasons. Some of them are more particular to the negotiations that would have to occur and wanting those dealt with up front, which would be difficult to do, especially...

Mr. Chairman, the question of the work we are involved in, for example, with MACA, we worked with them in preparation of the legislation they put together on the NWT portion.

On the bigger picture, involved with Executive and other departments on the approach to the federal government to see what work they would be doing. Unfortunately, as the Member pointed out, we haven’t had much success in that area. Our role is to work with land departments because they have a direct responsibility with the appropriate federal office and ministry and we help them with the preparation of those meetings as...

Thank you. I can’t speak for future governments in the final decision and the final agreement process, but clearly, as we’ve done the work up to this stage it has been inclusive of all the regions, at least in the designing of the agreement-in-principle. I would say that since, even as observers, they’ve been influencing the language of the agreement-in-principle, as I’ve just responded earlier to a question. We would hope that they would be at the table to help design and impact the language that we would use going forward. Some of those things require bilateral discussions or bilateral...

Mr. Chairman, that is a chief negotiater position. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

In directorate, for example, we have one at P2, one at P1, and both are female. In policy and planning we have a number of P2s and a P1 in our system. Negotiations is where I think we’ve done a fair bit of work that we’ve stepped up at negotiator and chief negotiator positions where we have in negotiations one chief negotiator P1, we have a senior negotiator P1, another senior negotiator and four assistant negotiators P1s that we’re hoping to be able to move up as we’ve put this program in place. Implementation, same thing. We have three in P1 category and three in the P2 category...

Mr. Chairman, while we go into the detail of all the contracts we have and that is not a problem, the Member may be referring to contracts that are held not through Aboriginal Affairs but other consultants that I use as the Premier of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Yes, we will provide that detail.

Mr. Chairman, the first piece we were working on is the government’s framework and out of that could come a self-government policy. Right now we’re using the key features document and then all the mandates, so the government’s framework will set out the parameters of that. If the Members are willing, that could go the next step and start working on development of an actual specific policy. Thank you.