Floyd Roland

This government has made huge investments in looking at alternative energies, that being some of the biggest cost drivers. When we looked at the overall impacts, two factors come to the forefront around the cost of living and that is transportation and energy costs. So we’re looking at expanding, for example, hydroelectricity to smaller hydro potential initiatives in our communities. So we’re pursuing that. We’re looking at wind energy. We’re looking at a number of other factors; biomass. But those are yet to come and have the potential to reduce the cost of living or stabilize it in our...

The self-government financing piece is an example of how we’ve worked together with the aboriginal governments and negotiators. We’ve worked with every table and given them the information around that self-government financing piece, but it is still a difficulty in getting it to a successful conclusion because the partner that would come to the table... Well, let’s use the example since we’re talking about aboriginal issues, bring to the potluck with a potlatch would require the federal government to bring their end of this bargain and that is still an area up for final conclusion, I guess we...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We will supply that list. Because of our timing this year in getting the program rolled out, this year's is a targeted list, but future years will be an application-based list to help with core funding of NGOs and the only reason it is done differently this year is because of the timing as we finally get this program rolled out. Thank you.

Yes, please, Mr. Chairman.

I think that question is a very big question politically on future development of our Territory and the understanding and relationship we have with aboriginal governments, and that is why the Northern Leaders’ Forum plays a critical role as how we go forward. The next piece of work we’re going to engage in is the political development of the NWT with the regional leaders. I think that will go a long way in establishing the relationship forward and building the support for further discussions around devolution and, further to that, the resource revenue sharing piece.

Right now, it’s been a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although we’ve heard something of discussion out there about a group who has gone on-line to raise concerns about the high cost of energy there has been no request made to Members of this Cabinet nor, as is my understanding, to Regular Members as well.

While there are definitely times when an aboriginal group or even the federal government may say that we’re slowing the process down there are many occasions when we help move things along. For example, in helping writing the proposals and the frameworks as we go forward and one of those examples, again, in sharing information upfront is the self-government financing piece where we went to all of the groups to identify the model we put together and showed them that model and what that, as a basis, potentially meant for implementation and the cost of implementing these agreements. So that’s an...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The increased travel results from an increased travel on the 2011 Census report, so we will be going to all the communities to help with doing that census as it happens in 2011. As well, because we are starting to step up on our devolution discussions again on re-engagement, we have increased travel there to about $20,000, we’re estimating, and then the rest of that will fall into the increase related to projects from the forest services in rural remote communities is another one of those reasons. That goes to my opening comments talking about recommendations made by...

I know the Member is very adept at looking at how we do things as a government and his professional expertise in areas, but he seems to cover quite an area from climate change expertise right down to now contracting, and if in fact the work that we get is quality work or not. We can debate that quality here and we do that. The issues of the work we do as a government, the nature of that work that needs to get done and the timing of that all comes into place when we make decisions. In fact, again, the Member says that the public is outraged at this or very concerned about that. Between an...

Mr. Chairman, I don’t have that information handy with me, but we can get the previous work that was done in this area. Of course, if we were to progress down this path we would probably have to… I know we’d have to do an updated review of positions identified in the North. Thank you.