Floyd Roland

On the power generation side, I know the Power Corporation itself is involved with the parties on the conversion of natural gas to diesel for the community of Hay River, so we’re much more involved. With the new attitude of the CEO and the board, I think we will be much more proactive in working and engaging with our communities to find satisfactory solutions to power issues with our communities.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for that question. It gives me an opportunity to highlight a number of changes that we’ve made recently within the Power Corporation to better address the customers that we serve across the Northwest Territories. We’ve recently added -- as we’ve provided information across the Territories -- a new CEO, Mr. David Axford, to the Power Corporation, who is situated in Hay River. Also, we’ve brought on a new chair of the board of the Power Corporation and we’ve added a new member for the Sahtu to the board as well.

It was unfortunate that the incident...

The protocol agreement that we helped in the process -- mind you, we were given a final draft copy late and let’s realize that a protocol is worked on with all partners -- we helped and supported the protocol work of the regional groups. I’d asked at a number of meetings if we would be provided an early draft so that we could respond, if there were concerns with the language that was in there that would not work with us. Unfortunately, we were given a final draft, we had to respond quickly. As I was open with the leaders that I met with and the technical staff that they had that I met with on...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve been through the process of working up to the AIP. We’ve heard some of the concerns. We’ve tried to address it through, for example, chapter 4, where we talk about protection of Aboriginal rights as concerns about those groups that have land claims and self-government that are in the negotiation process. We’ve incorporated the language in the signed AIP that sets out the protection and the wording and with the input of the representatives of the groups at the table to put in the language that protects Aboriginal rights. Certainly the fact that the Constitution...

Quite clearly -- and I’ve shared this with regional leaders right from the earliest days as we received the letters from the chief negotiators -- there are some matters that have been brought to the table, brought to the negotiation teams, that were outside of the agreement-in-principle.

Let’s go back to what this agreement-in-principle is about. It is about what the federal government is making decisions on today with their present infrastructure, their present regime in place, it is about transferring that existing system over to us and once we have the authority as governments in the North...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve already mentioned this letter a number of times in this House by the Member and spoke to the reasons it’s taken so long, apologized for the delay in some of them, but with all the events happening, it was better to respond with a full deck of cards and positions and send those responses out.

In the letter that I sent back to the president of the Gwich’in Tribal Council, we touched on those issues that he raised. In fact, we spoke of the fact that a number of those issues were outside of the agreement-in-principle and would be better dealt with, as I was saying in...

The work that has to occur, as the Member has just raised, will need to happen as we begin our negotiations and establish those mandates. We haven’t even started that work as the GNWT. We’ve started to look at the team we need to put forward and preparing a work plan and a schedule to that work plan, and that’s where we’re wanting to get the Aboriginal groups back to the table at the earliest opportunity so they can help in some of that work and put their concerns on the table as well. That work would happen as we begin to set those mandates and we go forward. I see that as work to be done as...

I think the language we use here, it sometimes can help inflame the situation that we find ourselves in, to a certain degree. Not all of the regions are in disagreement. We know some are right now planning to hold some of their meetings. We’re in communications with them on a number of fronts around the devolution process and again offer up the meetings. We do have to follow up with a formal process. So there are calls going on to stay in touch and keep in touch with what some of the regions are planning, what they are saying out there or what we are hearing. But we will follow up formally...

Mr. Speaker, as Members have raised this issue in a number of our meetings, as well as Aboriginal leaders have, my response has been consistent, that as we draw down these jurisdictions and we negotiate the human resource transfer, there are a number of jobs that are already existing in the North, but there are approximately 175 new positions coming to the North. As we begin that work in setting our mandates, we’ll begin to be able to set that model of how we’d like to see it structured.

I would say that we have that opportunity to set that mandate and look at a decentralized model and, in fact...

There’s much work to be done as we look at this next phase and begin the work of preparing for setting mandates and negotiations. Those negotiations and the final outcome will then give us a clearer picture of what those exact authorities are drawn down and what areas of legislation that we will have our hands on as Northerners that we can rewrite. So we’re preparing a work plan and getting the pieces together to see just the timelines that we’ll have, the people we’ll need to put in place to help us with this process, the relationship with our Aboriginal partners on those initiatives that are...