Floyd Roland

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.

We do have staff throughout a number of departments, Executive, we do have people who share the workload and help us in dealing with the issue of gender-based analysis.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The work that we’ve done around the gender basis issue has been one that, as the Member has pointed out, doing some workshops and training amongst our staff within the Government of the Northwest Territories to make everyone more aware as we look at the work we do and how it influences decision-making.

We do follow our policies. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I must take exception to the manner the Member raised in his Member’s statement about how this government has been pathetic in reaching out. The fact is, during the life of this government, the 16th Assembly, we set up the regional leaders approach that had all the regional leaders, presidents, grand chiefs at the table to help set the discussion about what we share and how we do work and things. At the table we also recognize that we’re not always going to agree on subject matters that come forward.

In fact, this agreement-in-principle that the Member is referring to...