Joe Handley

Yes, Mr. Speaker, it’s our intention to have that sort of arrangement set up. I don’t know the structure of it, but we will do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That issue certainly came up of getting it tangled up in the bureaucracy and, in fact, the Prime Minister himself referred to it as we don’t want to get into bureaucratic morass, is what he had called it. So he’s very aware of not letting this thing start to spin out of control here. Do we trust him? Do we work with him? I say yes, we haven’t got a lot of choice. Has he delivered? I guess I’d differ with you if you say we haven’t seen anything concrete because I tell you in the last month, it’s been a lot of hard work, a lot of slugging from our side, but I think...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am certainly willing and, in fact, eager to meet with the people in the Sahtu to talk about the implementation plan which was just recently negotiated. I did want to go there a while ago, but the weather prevented it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Madam Chair, I think I will deal with the questions in the reverse order. First of all, in terms of respecting the relationship that aboriginal governments have with Ottawa, we will fully respect that relationship and have no difficulty at all with it. We are not trying to say to Ottawa we are the government that you should deal with and then we will deal with the aboriginal governments at all. In fact, while I was in Ottawa, most of the Akaitcho and the Tlicho were well represented in Ottawa, holding their own meetings. I think that is healthy and it was good. The one thing that I would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to provide a brief update to Members of the House on meetings held earlier this week in Ottawa, including a meeting with Prime Minister Martin and Members of his Cabinet on October 24th and the First Ministers' meeting that the Honourable Floyd Roland and I attended on Tuesday, October 26th.

On Sunday, October 24th, the Premiers of Yukon, Nunavut and I met with the Prime Minister, Ministers Goodale, Robillard, Scott and Blondin-Andrew to discuss the commitment set out in the Throne speech to develop a comprehensive...

Madam Chair, I think we have had some very significant new ground broken. I’ll explain it to you. Under our Constitution we have an equalization program with the provinces. Section 36 of the Constitution says that Parliament and the Government of Canada are committed to the principle of making equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public service at reasonably comparable levels of taxation. That has always existed for the provinces. It has not existed for the territories. We used to have one where we’d...

Mr. Speaker, yes, that continues to be in place. It’s in the framework agreement that all three parties signed last winter and we signed in January; I think the federal government signed off in March. That’s the only time frame we have right now, and at some point soon we will have to sit down with the aboriginal governments and with the federal government and review that and see if this is still a realistic target for us to be aiming at. Mr. Speaker, I want to make significant progress or complete devolution during the life of our government and I’m still aiming at trying to do it by 2006...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday was an excellent debate and I would say in my view it certainly was one of our better days if not our best day as legislators here. With regard to the mandate on devolution, I had said that I would make it available to Members and I certainly will do that. Mr. Speaker, because we are in negotiations, I really don’t think it would be wise to make public our mandate unless everybody wanted to put their mandates on the table because it is a negotiated process. But, Mr. Speaker, I’m ready to make it available to Members privately. I’m ready to make it...

Mr. Speaker, yes, I’ve already made that request to the Prime Minister in earlier discussions. I am meeting with him on Sunday, and that will be reinforced. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I think the main methods to the Prime Minister and to the federal government that we have taken forward is that we want to be consulted on programs that the federal government has that impact on our territory or on our population. So that message has been consistent.

Mr. Speaker, I’m not, at this point -- without consultation, without knowing more about the missile defence systems and so on -- prepared to take a position and relay that to the Prime Minister. I will, though, and I have been saying to him that we want to be at the table to discuss the northern strategy which he has...