Bob Bromley

Just to complete the picture for me, and ongoing for how many years? Thank you.

I appreciate getting the full range. I have a good series of yesses going here. How about a plebiscite? Our Elections and Plebiscites Act says that, on the recommendation of the Assembly, the Commissioner can order a plebiscite take place, but that recommendation must come from this House. Will the Premier commit to supporting a plebiscite that will allow meaningful public participation and debate, and a sense of ownership in this historic agreement before signing the final Devolution Agreement?

That gets me in the ballpark and I think I’ll leave it at that. I’m sure we’ll be having lots more discussions on that.

Mr. Chair, I appreciate those comments. I know the Minister has concerns in this area and we’ll be going after things. He listed quite a number of initiatives that we hope to do. All of them have costs to them. I guess I’m disappointed that here we have $6 million that we are reducing in subsidies and no attempt to increase our efforts in the direction that the Minister has indicated. I will leave it at that, Mr. Chair. That’s all I had on this page. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I guess I will leave it at that. I will maybe ask the Premier to bring his plan forward for committee to comment on. I guess I wish I had the confidence he had. I know we have lots of experience at this and, on that basis, I know we know how costly it is. I do want to acknowledge that Aboriginal governments have been very much involved, and I appreciate the opportunity for them to be at the table and keep their people updated. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for 50 percent of the people in the Northwest Territories, so somebody needs to speak for those people. Thank you.

Thank you, and just the second part of that was how many years we will be paying that amount. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement earlier today with questions to the Premier on devolution. I’m wondering, first, if the Premier could explain what process of public consultation and validation we can expect following the eventual signing of the draft final agreement on devolution.

Thank you. I know that with organizations and partnering governments there is some confusion about that. So to the extent that we can lay that out and be specific when corresponding or whatever, I’m getting the impression that would be very useful. This has been useful for me and I’ll be taking a look at these agreements as they come to fruition and educating myself on it. But thanks for those comments. That’s all I had. Thank you.

I appreciate that plain language version of what’s actually happening here. To plain language it even more, we’re going to be paying more and more subsidies into the future, so it is going up as time goes by. I guess what’s really important here is to try and deal with the underlying costs of generating power, and we’re not putting much towards that. We are putting some, but it’s very modest compared to these sorts of amounts that I’ve been quoting: last year, $27 million; this year, $21 million. It looks like it’s sort of dropping a little bit next year but, obviously, this amount is going up...

Mr. Chair, I am sure that the Premier can relate when I tell him that I have seen IT eat up a lot more than $22.5 million in a year. I am concerned that we have the participation of our public in this agreement, as the Premier knows. He has listed quite a list of demands on this $22.5 million. None of those were small expenditures.

How are we going to ensure that there is enough public consultation dollars? I say this knowing that the Premier has stated publicly that we are a public consulting government, a leader in North America I think he said on that front. I appreciate that. We obviously...