Bob McLeod

We haven’t worked that out yet. We’d have to talk to the two governments, at least.

I’m a very practical and pragmatic person, so before we start talking about a constitution, we need to get devolution done first.

We are still finalizing our draft communications and engagement plan, and our expectation is we will share it with committee. The principle is that when we go to the regions where the Aboriginal governments have not yet signed on to devolution, I expect that we will go to their communities with some representatives of the Dehcho First Nation Government and the Akaitcho First Nation Government. We have done it before so we would do it again. They’re the best governments to tell us and make sure we don’t infringe on any rights.

Well, I’ve said it before that we are the elected leaders of the Northwest Territories. We are here to represent the people of the Northwest Territories. I think we should stand up and be counted. I don’t think we should be running a government by plebiscite or by referendum.

No, I didn’t say that we expect no conflicting opinions. We’ve heard a lot of conflicting opinions, even here in this House. I’ve also said that we were going to put it to a vote here in this Legislative Assembly. If you have a conflicting opinion, you can tell us when we have our team going around to all the communities or you can tell your MLA.

Thank you. I’ll work very closely with my colleague, the Minister of MACA, and we’ll see how well or how many action plans we’ve developed. If our action plans are developed to the extent whereby we can move to the next level and if committee concurs that this would be a priority, then we would seriously look at this framework that the Member is talking about. Thank you.

That would be part of our planning process, and that’s something that we are actively looking at. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We are a very effective and efficient government, and that is obviously our intention. It doesn’t make much sense to hire people to put them in one community and then make them move to another community. For that reason, we have been undertaking inventories of available housing, office space. Where it makes sense, we will do exactly that, we will hire people to move into certain communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think, in the longer term, we can aspire to that, but right now we’re going to get the devolution deal done and we’re going to implement devolution. We have a good midwife; we can start moving on to provincehood.

We already, as the Northwest Territories, are part of Confederation. I think, if I can put words in the Member’s mouth, he’s talking about becoming a province. We have looked at it. Right now the last time we examined it, our revenues would decline significantly. We would get approximately two-thirds less than what we’re getting now if we became a province, plus we’d have to face a hurdle whereby we would have to obtain at least 50 percent of the five most populated provinces to agree that the Northwest Territories should become a province. Those are the realities that we have to deal with.