Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a government, we see equitable participation of women in all aspects of the government. As well, we would like to see improvements made in a number of areas in the communities. Right now we’re working primarily with the Status of Women Council and the Native Women’s Association of the Northwest Territories and we would like to see more representation in this Legislative Assembly. I think that as a government, 64 percent of our employees are female and 50 percent of our deputy minister cadre are women. I think that certainly we want to see more women advance into the...

There’s always hope. From what I’m hearing from the two Members here, it seems apparent that the Dehcho First Nations have rejected the land offer that we’ve made, but that is a bilateral process. It was between the Dehcho First Nations and the Government of the Northwest Territories. We have offered to go to the communities to explain the offer that we’ve made, and we’ve also offered to anyone that invites us to come to present that. Obviously, at the end of the day, there’s always the main table, which involves the federal government, the Government of the Northwest Territories and the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories is working hard to find solutions to the significant outstanding issues at the Dehcho Process negotiations. Part of this work included making an offer to the Dehcho on land quantum and how to conclude a Dehcho agreement-in-principle. This offer took many months to develop and incorporated the work of senior officials appointed by myself and the Dehcho grand chief to consider innovative solutions to these very challenges. When I wrote to the grand chief to clarify our offer, I indicated that we were looking forward to receiving...

The Government of the Northwest Territories will continue to work in good faith with the representatives of the Dehcho First Nations Process. However, this can only be made with frank and honest conversations. This means that we must be able to lay out the extent of what we can do while still being fair to everyone. This is simply being honest and respectful. It is not being a bully or acting in a threatening manner.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The land claims negotiation process with Dehcho First Nations involves three parties: the Dehcho First Nations, the Government of Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. We will make sure that we set the foundation through transitional arrangements for the 18th Assembly. Thank you.

As my colleagues have been saying, I think we have 260 days until the next election. Obviously, an important thing for us to do is to make sure that women’s issues are provided for through the transition process both at the departmental level and at the highest level of this Legislative Assembly. We are also looking at gender-based analysis that’s been around for a long time. I think we want to revisit that to make sure that it is a lens that we run our programs through as we go forward, and it would be nice if we could find ways to increase the funding for the women’s organizations.

Thank you. The framework agreement does provide for that and the Dehcho negotiators had requested a main table session today and, ultimately, they decided to cancel it, but the provisions of the draft agreement do provide for that. So when we come to it, we’d be prepared to discuss it. Thank you.

Thank you. Certainly that is what we would like to do if we can get to that.

The whole premise and process of land claims negotiations is based on the Dene-Metis Comprehensive Claim from 20 years ago. It’s being fair to a process where we’ve seen four land claim and resources agreements settled based on populations from 20 years ago. For a party to wait 20 years to negotiate whose population increases, it means that there’s a difference between the settlements. That’s why both the Government of Canada and the Northwest Territories government are using the populations that were in place at the time of the draft Dene-Metis Comprehensive Claim 20 years ago. The population...