Floyd Roland

There are two pots of funding that start to flow upon signing of the agreement-in-principle. That is tied specifically to some of the work that would be prepared as groups prepare for negotiations, mandates and so on, to do the background work. The work we’re talking about doing is looking at the agreement-in-principle itself, to give the leadership and community members a better idea of just what the agreement-in-principle is. Of course, to share in the funding that’s available to Aboriginal groups, they need to sign on and that would allow the federal government to sit with them to then...

I don’t believe it’s stalled.

Again, the work that we’ve done has been more about the training, getting it through to our staff with the help of other departments like the Department of Human Resources to help us in the training and getting the knowledge out there. I’d have to get back to the department to see if in fact I will be able to have a policy to bring back to the Members.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Jackson Lafferty will be absent from the House today, tomorrow and Wednesday to attend the federal/provincial/territorial Education Ministers meeting in Toronto. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

When we put the facts on the table, for example Mackenzie Valley Construction in the region, in the Department of Transportation it accounts for almost 70 percent of the contract values both negotiated, public tenders, the whole process. So that comparison is difficult to do. On top of that, when we have large construction projects, that requires a certain level of commitment by the contractors to be able to build on that. We follow the policies there as well. I think the comparison of the Inuvik constituency versus the Aklavik or Mackenzie Delta constituency, the Member well knows that the...

We do have a policy within the Government of the Northwest Territories on consultation. All departments have that and we ensure that we work with departments in fulfilling our commitments. As well, this Assembly has a process of doing that. Once legislation is introduced, there is a whole different forum for public consultation on that and bringing the bills back to this Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories does have a consultation package in place. We worked through in Intergovernmental Affairs and the intergovernmental group as well as Aboriginal Affairs and Executive and Justice to look at a number of agreements around the country to inform all departments of our consultation requirements for our policies and legislation. Thank you.

Well, how to put this in a way that is respectful of all the processes that we’ve been a part of since 2001 when the discussion of devolution began to take hold through the Intergovernmental Forum. Through that time since 2002 from a framework to where we are today between the federal government and ourselves, we’ve put almost, I think, I’ll have to get the accurate figure but I know we’ve put, between the federal government and ourselves, almost $8 million on the table to work with the groups around the agreement-in-principle. I’ll get the accurate information from a GNWT perspective.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The issue of the agreement-in-principle and trying to get the information out on top of the years of discussions around the negotiation of the agreement-in-principle piece we’ve looked at and sent letters out to the regional leadership and invited them to contact us to go over the agreement-in-principle and the issues they may have out of that and look at sharing in the funding of those meetings.

The groups have been involved from the earliest days, right from 2002 forward up until the protocol work we were doing. All groups were involved in that. We looked at the request from the Dene Nation, reviewed it to see how we could look at doing this work and reaching out, and the decision was to work with the regional approach that we put together at the start of this Assembly and we’re continuing to do that. We have contacted the Dene Nation and informed them our approach will be with the regional and community leaders.