Floyd Roland

We will continue to update our files on the different elected leaders throughout the Northwest Territories and we will continue to do that as we go forward. Yes, we will focus and make sure we have the right contacts. Of key importance is responding to the person writing the letter originally, and that is the president, and respond to that and go forward on that basis.

Again, as we’ve looked and done this work, it has been inclusive. We have had a seat at the table, whether it is at the bilateral working teams as we presented and even when it was purely a bilateral issue of the GNWT and federal...

The Member knows, from his own history as a negotiator, there are times when the main table has participants there from different parties that share that responsibility, and there are times when it’s a team approach and the chief negotiator works with other groups as preparing for the main table so that the messaging is consistent. So we don’t need to go there and debate who has the actual say at the table. There are places in this agreement-in-principle where, in fact, it’s going to be a bilateral discussion between Aboriginal governments and the GNWT. So we’ll, in fact, be at the table...

The Northern Leaders’ Forum is a side table to the regional leaders’ meetings that we had, we established, inviting other participants to be a part of the work we were doing on building a common vision. At our recent meeting we were presented materials from the Inuvialuit and the Metis, as well as the Association of Municipalities, and we are pulling that information together. Our response now is with that material. We’re sending it back to all of the participants, even those that were not there, as they were provided funds to be a part of this and we hope that although they were preoccupied...

I think this is one of the areas that is of particular interest from the Aboriginal government and organizations across the North, is how would that occur, what type of design, how it would work with existing land claims. As we’ve stated through this agreement, there are land claims in place and we recognize those. Whether it’s co-managed bodies, it will be that type of a design that we’d be looking first to ensure that we don’t cause unnecessary overlaps in areas. Clearly, as we’ve highlighted, initially we’ll draw down a mirror approach to the federal government and once we have that...

We’d be prepared to hold public information meetings with the community, the leadership and residents within the community. It is about trying to get as much information out to people so that they can understand what this document is and what it means as we go forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The process that has led up to this has been a very comprehensive one and areas where we were not able to identify, we have had language built into the agreement-in-principle that would ensure that the GNWT would not inherit these unseen liabilities. There’s been a fair bit of work done and we’ll have to do more work as we enter into actual negotiations on some of these areas where there would be full responsibility and accountability by the federal government where it would be shared, one, between the federal government and the GNWT and Aboriginal governments, as well...

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. Now that we have a signed agreement-in-principle we will be able to reach out to all our households across the Northwest Territories. We are in the process of developing a householder that can go into the homes to give a plain language overview of the agreement-in-principle. As well, while that is being developed and hopefully once we have a draft copy, we can send it off. It will be a matter of weeks to get that out.

The other side of it is through the radio and using Aboriginal languages interpretation to reach out to our communities through the radio programs that are...