Bob McLeod

I think it will become very clear as soon as we finish our legal and technical review and we make that draft agreement public. It won’t be for an unlimited period of time. It will probably be a very short period of time, probably a year at the most, I would suspect. We’re still finalizing that part. Sometime before the end of this week you should know the answer.

In a normal situation, when it comes to treaty and Aboriginal rights, we have a duty to consult just like the Government of Canada does. With regard to devolution, we don’t feel that there is a requirement for us to have duty to consult because it’s our position that devolution does not infringe on treaty or Aboriginal rights. We have a significant amount of non-abrogation clauses that ensure we don’t infringe on Aboriginal treaty rights. To make sure that we are very cautious, to make sure we don’t miss anything, we will be doing our consulting with Aboriginal governments and making sure we...

Well, in an ideal world we would educate everybody in the Northwest Territories about the draft Devolution Final Agreement and we would have the comfort of knowing that everybody supports it and everybody would vote here and pass it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m glad to hear from the Member that she supports devolution. I’m not sure where the conflicting information is coming from because I’ve been very clear in what I’ve been saying.

We have a communications and engagement plan. The plan focuses on engagement with three key audiences, following conclusion of negotiations of the Northwest Territories Land and Resources Devolution Agreement. We will be meeting with stakeholders and communities, Aboriginal governments who are not parties to the agreement, and Aboriginal governments who are parties to the agreement. What we...

We expect that it will take about 40 to 50 days to have our public engagement and communications done on devolution, and I expect that we can vote on it in the May-June session.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We are just in the process of developing our draft communications strategy, and I think we are sharing it with committee. If it hasn’t reached committee yet, it will be there very soon, in the next day or so.

I agree with the Member.

If the Members wish, we would put it to a vote in the Legislative Assembly, and it would be a yes or no vote.

I will do that. This federal government is very responsive and I’m sure they will address this concern on a timely basis, but I will communicate that concern to them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Generally, the individual Ministers that make commitments, their departments will bring it to their attention. In other cases where we have Cabinet Ministers that have experience in the different departments and if they become aware of it, then we would bring it to the Minister’s attention. Then we would deal with it appropriately.