Bob McLeod

We have already faced those types of situations where we’ve identified positions and we’ve wanted to put them in communities, and due to a lack of infrastructure, lack of housing, lack of office space, we couldn’t find any place to put them. So a lot of times we have to park people in other centres. I think that we expect that, on a number of occasions when we do devolution and transfer positions, we may have to park people in larger centres that have the capacity before we develop additional infrastructure in other centres. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very pleased this day has come, because now we can answer all the hard questions.

This is something that we’ve planned for. Obviously, I’ve said it many times in this Assembly, that decentralization is a priority for this government. There are already approximately 175 federal government positions that are located in the Northwest Territories, and there will be approximately the same amount of positions that will be transferred to the Northwest Territories. We’ve been working on our organizational design. We expect to have at least four new departments, and we have...

Right now I’m focused on getting the final devolution deal done to have implementation. But I have spoken to a significant number of media and every one of them asks about becoming a province. Obviously, the Northwest Territories is the only jurisdiction in Canada that has a declining population. If we went to become a province, we’re going to have to turn that around. I look at Alberta. When Alberta became a province in the 1930s, they had a population of about 100,000. I expect that with all the potential for development and the tremendous resource potential, the road that we’re going to...

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

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 convey that to them. With the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic link that will connect all of the communities through the Internet.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe I read the same media release/media reporting that the Member is quoting from. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.