Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The sustainability of our communities is an important initiative. One of the parts of our vision and goals of the 16th Legislative Assembly is to try to create an environment of sustainability. So there are a number of factors that we have engaged with during the life of this government and one of them is going to be the Electricity Rate Review and the adjustments to our delivery of electricity. The other is in the area of the economic side, under the Minister of ITI, has been, for example, the SEED program, the agricultural program, investments being made in that area...

Early on in our discussions at the regional leaders table, the idea of a constitution was brought up because the Dene Nation has raised it as one of their efforts. The regional leaders felt that we needed to work on some of our own issues first, and then a constitution would be the overarching piece. As well, when we look at our own history in the Northwest Territories, following the Bourque Report, there was the Constitutional Development Steering Committee that did its work through the 12th and into the 13th Assembly -- I believe those were the dates -- and then the Constitutional Working...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The work that was done at the Trappers Lodge with prominent past leaders and people involved in aboriginal negotiations and self-government discussions did invite myself and Mr. Miltenberger to drop by for a brief discussion. They pointed out the work they had done together and they were going to submit that report. We haven’t received it. I have put it into our system for review, and one of the things I told them is that we would be prepared to sit down with the regional leaders at the end of November to share their work to see what regional leaders would say about...

The information I have is that the forum is based on capacity building, sharing best practices, improving governance and management, and strengthening the working relationship with government departments. Thank you.

I know there has been ongoing work around the NGO, and the stabilization of funding and the process. There have been a number of departments involved: the Executive, Finance, as well as the Minister of Community Affairs. Again, on that piece of work I’ll have to get that information from the appropriate departments and get back to the Member. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, as I stated earlier, if the situation in the community of Tuk doesn’t correct itself and we find a satisfactory solution there, we would look at the other communities within that area, or around the Territory as a possibility, but we would look at where there is a wind factor. Again, hopefully we could find a satisfactory report on this. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, of course we are hopeful that a satisfactory approach can be resolved here with the Tuk community and the wind turbine situation. Of course, if that is not able to proceed, we would go back to the Ministers of the Energy Coordinating Committee and relook at that and evaluate where we can do that and reallocate funds to communities that are willing and where we have the studies to show that wind is consistent enough for wind power. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the number of policies the Member just highlighted are policies that will allow us to do just that. That is create, try to help build capacity in the communities so that they can take on more of the contracting that happens in our communities and not have businesses come in from other parts of the Territory or southern Canada. The Negotiated Contracts Policy of sole-sourcing and so on is there to do just that.

We will continue to use those tools where we have capital programs in those communities to try and assist in that building of capacity. Thank you.

The processes we’ve been involved with as the Government of the Northwest Territories during this government and even previous governments to try to create a level of sustainability in our communities looks at those kinds of jobs. There were community transfer initiatives examples that were used and unsuccessful for a large part partly because of the way things were looked at in those days.

We’ve looked at a number of other initiatives ourselves. One of the areas is our program review to see how we deliver those programs and services in our communities and what impact that can have. So there...

The process we are under does not have to legitimize the GNWT. The fact is, we are, in this forum, elected by our constituents in this forum, and we’re receiving a salary to do the job paid by taxpayers from the country as well as the people of the Northwest Territories. So I would say the NWT Act, although held by the federal government, puts us in place and that’s why we have the pleasure of representing the people across this fine land we call the Northwest Territories and our home. So the work that we’re doing is one that takes the next stage of development of the Northwest Territories and...