Floyd Roland

We have kept the discussion going at the political level with engagement from the Prime Minister’s office, a commitment to have further discussions around an infrastructure discussion. There has been no formal proposal put in place, but we continue to engage, for example, with the Minister of Transportation and other Ministers around this idea and looking at how we can work with the federal government through the different pots of funding to even come up with, for example, what they have announced up in the Inuvik-Tuk portion of highway work that can be done. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I’m optimistic that we can, working together as leaders across the Northwest Territories. Not just the Government of the Northwest Territories but the aboriginal leadership across this Territory, the community leadership across this Territory can work together to develop a plan to bring that plan forward together as one group of people in the Northwest Territories. Not a difference between who we are and who we represent, but one people of the Northwest Territories representing a diverse group, of course. But I believe if we decide to work at this and put some effort and energy...

Mr. Speaker, I think there’s a lot Regular Members can do in helping us get the message out there, whether it’s to our northern leadership, aboriginal leadership, how we work together, the information, if there’s a request for more information. If you’re hearing back that there needs to be a certain type of information put out, let’s get together and develop a package we can put out there. The message we send to Ottawa is an important one. They pay attention to what we say and do in this Assembly. So I think there’s much we can do together in getting the message out about the North and the...

Mr. Speaker, the Member is entitled to his own opinion no matter where it goes or comes from.

As the Government of the Northwest Territories, the appropriate departments have been involved. We were the best organized, I think many would say, when it came to the hearings. We are involved in the negotiations of the socio-economic agreement. There are a number of fronts we are involved with from Municipal and Community Affairs, ITI and ENR.

Again, the Member is entitled to his own opinion on that. We will coordinate, we will respond and we will engage in Members through that response as we go...

Mr. Speaker, we have stated earlier a number of departments involved in this. There will be a government position. We will coordinate that and we will be working with Members as to what gets done. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Jackson Lafferty will be absent from the House for the remainder of this week to attend the federal/provincial/territorial Justice Ministers meeting in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There has been quite a number of Assemblies that have shown their support for the Mackenzie Valley Highway, this Assembly being one of them. There have been a number of reports that include infrastructure, highways. I think there are a number of reports out there that have been put forward to the federal government around connections, highways, transportation, airports, ferries, that type of scenario. What we’ve been engaged in was to look at how we can keep a devolution/revenue sharing deal on the table tied to future investments in key infrastructure in the Northwest Territories like the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The opportunity that I took was with the Prime Minister, looking at the devolution and resource revenue sharing talks, where that was as the cap that was identified, and put it forward to the Prime Minister that we come up with an infrastructure deal that could see us in partnership building a project like the Mackenzie Valley Highway. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This fund is an application-based fund. It is not set out per capita or an allotment made out. Traditionally, for example, when a federal program and dollars are announced, if it’s a billion dollars, we qualify for just over $1 million. So this is not the case. This is project by project. We are using, for example, though the list has not been compiled in the sense of all potential projects, but because it’s cost-shared, we have to come up with our own dollars and we tend to use projects that are in the system already established. We have a number of projects, as Members are aware, that are in...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First and foremost, I look to the authority of this House. The Members here represent the people of the Northwest Territories from quite a diverse range of communities and businesses and individuals. So our work would start here. We would decide how far we’d go and I’d also caution Members that we need to be careful in how we approach this. If we’re going to do every business case that we’re involved with by going out to the public, decisions won’t be made for quite some time. People of the Northwest Territories have made it quite clear they’re looking for some...