Sandy Lee

We have been negotiating this for as long as we have been a government, as long as we have had a Legislature here, as long as we became a responsible government and no longer populated by appointees from the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. Every Member of this Legislature who ever ran and got elected has had on their agenda devolution as their major task.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe what is happening with this pipeline is so huge, we are spending a lot of energy and time talking about how we get the most financial benefit, how we get resource revenue sharing. All of that is important. We have many people spending lots of resources working on those to get the best deal possible. I think there should be the same effort, energy, and resources put on by this government. You get the money from the company, but is the government working with the partners that could work out a specific plan to get ready for the pipeline development? Are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The report, for example on page 5, has a whole section on community wellness. This is not just a women’s issue, but it is done by the Status of Women Council. It is coming from a woman’s perspective, which I believe also is always a better and enlightened perspective.

---Laughter

Mr. Speaker, if you read through this community wellness section, it really provides the government with concrete steps that the government could take to get the people ready for the megaprojects. It talks about child and homecare services, improve the information services like a helpline or...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you, colleagues. I would like to conclude by recognizing the very good work done by the Status of Women Council of the NWT who, in July of 2004, released a report titled Review of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Terms of Reference of the Mackenzie Gas Project. It is an excellent report with two very neatly organized tables included in the report that tells us what we need to do, what the mitigating steps are that we could take to get our people ready and to make sure that our people benefit from it in a maximum way. I would just like to say that all...

It doesn’t appear to be that we are making much progress there. I know that we have our negotiators, but we still haven’t heard much about what’s going on in that area. So while I support and I know that everyone here supports the economic gains and economic benefits that will come from the pipeline, it is really with heavy heart, because we have no guarantee that we are going to get our share of the resource revenues that we want to see and that we still don’t have power and control over things that we need to have in order to make the right public policies and guidelines and regulations...

Okay, thank you. Am I correct in thinking that currently the GNWT is budgeting $9.5 million as the potential liability, the settlement of this litigation, and that the department was able to find $7.253 million but it was deemed that it was short $2.247 million? So in order to top that $9.5 million we have to now appropriate this $2.247 million extra. I just want to know if I understand that correctly. Where does that $7.253 existing funds come from? Is that money that we have already allocated over the years? Thank you.

So is this another case of one of those not real money things? You’re keeping it on the books. Is it a $3 million liability we are putting down, or $2.769 million we are putting in the books, or maybe it’s $3.231 million? I don’t know. Keeping it on the books there is a liability, or is that money we have paid out?

Thank you on that. There is $231,000 for the loan guarantees associated with the default on the loan guarantee agreement with Sirius. Could I just get the Minister to state again why the government had to incur this $231,000 in expenditures?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are not able to find page 5, some people on this side. Is that the page that says budget and evaluation, is that page 5?

First of all, Mr. Speaker, I think what the Minister said about the fact that there is a union member in the appeal process, I think the Minister knows that that union member or whoever sits is not there to represent the employee who is going through the appeal. The union member is there as sort of a prop to make sure that the employee…They have a very negligent role to play, which is a complaint of the union. Second of all, Mr. Speaker, this government has not been forwarding a lot of legislative proposals. It hasn’t been a crowded agenda. I believe that Members here are always ready. A...