Joe Handley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I can provide more detail. Mr. Speaker, as we’ve said before, there were six outstanding items between ourselves and the federal government and I won’t go through each of them, but I will say that there are only two that are still outstanding. One has to do with the issues around net fiscal benefit. The other one has to do with the amount of money that would be transferred when federal employees and services are transferred to GNWT.

Mr. Speaker, in the case of net fiscal benefit, we are not going to accept a bad deal. We’d sooner have no deal. The Prime...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will consult with the aboriginal leaders who signed on to make sure they don’t have any difficulty with the agreement we signed with them. But the details of our negotiations involving the federal government, we would not want to make that public except in a very general sense until those negotiations are completed. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First let me clarify, we don’t have any dollars yet. What we have is a framework that sets out some of the guidelines to how the money will be spent. Assuming that there are no difficulties with the framework, then I would think that this will move fairly quickly. The federal government will be getting back to business soon from their summer recess. So I expect early this fall, but we have no way of knowing how fast they will work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Until l see the clarification on the roles, I will not make assumptions about who has what responsibility. Mr. Speaker, I am told that Minister Prentice, for example, is the lead Minister for the pipeline. That pipeline is in the North, so I don’t know what else may be in terms of division of responsibilities between these two Ministers, so I can’t make assumptions. But we will continue to work hard on trying to achieve an agreement-in-principle in the meantime. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the best of my knowledge in a negotiation and in any discussions, the fact that only four out of seven aboriginal organizations have signed on has never been an issue with the federal government. They have not raised that at all. They are satisfied with the four that we have been working with us. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly why we have to conclude a resource revenue sharing deal.

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Mr. Speaker, it is our money that is coming out of here. The federal government has it and now are looking at an equity position with our money. That’s why, Mr. Speaker, short of having a deal, we are sitting here being frustrated because other people are talking about how to spend our money.

Mr. Speaker, I would not want our government to be in a position where it’s competing with the Aboriginal Pipeline Group or aboriginal business or any business in the North. So our first priority, Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our officials have insisted we be there. This one happened, we didn’t know and, as I say, that is of great concern to us. Assuming we have devolution and resource revenue sharing at some point, this is a concern to the people of the North.

Mr. Speaker, in answer to the question, yes, either I will or the Minister of Finance will again say to Ottawa that you can’t just give us lip service on this, you have to follow through and let us know these meetings are there. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I haven’t had the opportunity to discuss this at any great extent yet with the president, but I will. I would certainly encourage the company involved to talk to the president and see if there is another creative way of doing this. It may be that there are enough units, for example, in a community that we could look at a different way of doing it where a local established business would be able to put in a reasonable price. Mr. Speaker, I would commit to speaking with the president and ask the company concerned to also do the same. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t know if I will have a chance to do it today…

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…but, Mr. Speaker, I will and we have committed to consulting with the Akaitcho and letting them know what we are doing in terms of the enforcement procedures. Hopefully we will have cooperation there.

Mr. Speaker, I also hope that DIAND will also follow a similar process as we are on their land because, Members know, we can only develop procedures and apply our legislation on Commissioner’s land. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was referring to trying to work with the Akaitcho negotiators, Akaitcho people, at the negotiation table. We tried that in 2004. It didn’t go anywhere. So, Mr. Speaker, I am certainly open to having our negotiator consider raising this again when there is next a meeting at the table.

Mr. Speaker, beyond that, what we are prepared to do right now is put out enforcement procedures that we have worked out, give people warnings and give people notice that they have to show us that they have the right to be occupying the land they have. If they don’t, then they are...