Floyd Roland

Mr. Speaker, that sounds like what we pretty well had in place under strategic initiatives and having Members be a part of that process. That avenue is still open to Members, if they want to get engaged at that level. It’s still open to them now. If you want real action, not another discussion, not another consultation process, that action can come to this House. In fact, a response directly to the energy rate review regulations piece of work. If we’re going to make fundamental change to the Northwest Territories, for the whole Northwest Territories big picture, make a difference as early as...

Mr. Speaker, I think there are a couple of avenues. One, first of all, I would agree with the Member about our staff complement out there delivering the power that residents use today and in the future. They are very dedicated and keep on trying to provide the best service in a challenging environment. In fact, I think the record shows on outages and so on that we actually rank very well compared to some of the jurisdictions.

The issue of where this might be able to go, again I think there are a couple of avenues, as we talked with Members around our response to the energy rate regulation piece...

Mr. Speaker, in the area of our Strategic Initiatives committees, we’ve been focusing on areas where we know we can get results sooner, and that is where the programs we’re directly involved with, the way we’ve designed them, the way we implement them and those issues. We’ve also worked with the federal government on a stimulus package to help offset some of those costs so we can get some of those projects in place that would help stabilize or lower the cost of living in our communities. We’ve also put in place the $60 million in alternative energies, again, to put in place, to stabilize our...

Mr. Speaker, I go back to the earlier Member’s statement that Mrs. Groenewegen had made earlier about when the Power Corp first came in, it used to be the Northern Canada Power Corporation. Then we took it over, our specific area within the Northwest Territories. At that time, the legislation was adopted and put in place and, in a sense, kept it at its level of a corporate structure. Since then there’s been little change, in fact, over the 22 years around that corporate structure. That is probably one of the things that would have to be looked at if we were to do any work in that area. Thank...

Mr. Speaker, it’s our responsibility as a government to make sure we work with the partners in the Northwest Territories. In fact, the list of meetings the Member has shows our commitment to work with the aboriginal membership across the Northwest Territories, whether it is around water, land, caribou, the many examples that we’ve worked in partnership developing either legislation or implementation plans about how we can serve and regulate the use of wildlife in the Northwest Territories. So we continue to do that.

As for seeking my opinion about what would qualify as satisfactory engagement...

As a result of the motion and motions prior to that, in fact as early as 2007, the importance of caribou was raised that we as a government from those motions worked with the First Nations aboriginal governments to come up with, number one, the accounts that were in dispute initially. We worked with them to get that information together using traditional knowledge and modern science and supported them with resources to help do the accounts. As well, that then set in place the initiatives that were undertaken by governments by reducing some of the earliest, when it came to tags or else those...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Bob McLeod will be absent from the House today to attend promotional events related to the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we’ve heard from Members, we’ve heard from the leadership across the Northwest Territories, the people, caribou is a way of life for many across the Northwest Territories and our neighbouring territories in the Yukon and Nunavut. It is so important, in fact, Mr. Speaker, that when the issue of the decline in caribou populations across the Northwest Territories arose, the government-of-the-day started investing money into doing a count, and a re-count, and another count. In those senses, the cumulative amount of money we’ve put on the table as a Government of the...

The motions that are passed, whether it is by the Dene Nation or the regional leadership or the specific regional government that brings forward initiatives that we sit down and respond to those motions. We have agreements in place. For example, through the co-management boards, through the settled areas, whether it’s the Inuvialuit, the Gwich’in, the Sahtu, and through the self-government process of the Tlicho. In the unsettled areas there was a number of discussions held. There were meetings, as well, around this issue as well as at the larger meetings at the Dene Nation itself talking about...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The process that we use at Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations when we become aware of these motions is we work with the appropriate departments to see their responses and how they would respond and work with the First Nations government or the Metis or the Inuvialuit, for example. There’s a process that is involved that we bring forward and work with them to try and work with the groups when it comes to the motion. In fact, in this particular case the Wekeezhii process is in place. Part of the Tlicho Self-Government Agreement that we work with and, as...