Bob McLeod

We’ve been trying to work with all of the tables. The federal government has also started, I think, their review of the negotiating tables. They want to focus on the land claims tables that seem to be making the most progress. They undertook surveys but we haven’t seen the results of the work that they’ve done. At least they haven’t shared it with us. We know that they have been doing that. We are also having some bilateral discussions with some of the negotiation tables to see if we can work together, at least from the Northwest Territories side, to see if we can make progress.

I think the approach that we’ve been taking is that if there were resources that became available, either through greater efficiency or through restructuring, we’ve been converting it to GSOs, at least certainly in Executive. I don’t think we’re taking the position that we’re going to go and ask for additional dollars to create GSOs. That certainly wasn’t our intention. As resources became available and we could make the case to convert it, we were doing so.

Mr. Chair, I would like to remind the Member that we have been at it for 12 years, and this latest round we have been to every community several times. We do have our Aboriginal partners that have been very active in this area. We have been to every community. We have also been with Aboriginal governments. We have briefed; we have fulfilled every request. It is our expectation that the resources that we have will allow us to do the job and meet the requirements for consultation. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We still have the same complement of tables, 15 negotiating tables. We are getting better at negotiating and we are also taking the approach of doubling up negotiators at some tables so that one negotiator can handle more than one table. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That responsibility lies with the Department of Executive but I’ll answer it anyway. Under the AIP on devolution, Section 6 provides for an Intergovernmental Council essentially so that all of the different governments can work together to manage the jurisdictions together but each being responsible for their own jurisdiction. We would have this council so that we would all work together to deal with land issues and resource issues and so on. That was the idea behind the Intergovernmental Council.

I don’t have that information, but maybe if the Member could share it with us as a start.

Mr. Chair, it will cover a number of different things: the IT systems, also the planning processes for organization, and also the hiring and job offers and positions that will have to be staffed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess we came up with this policy when the Metis Nation no longer existed. At that time we tried to find a consistent approach, and the government of the day decided that they would take the money that was available for funding the Metis Nation and divide it up amongst the 17 Metis locals that were in existence at the time. The money stayed the same for all these years and the last few years we took an approach whereby if some of the money was not disbursed, we would disburse it before the end of the fiscal year to those Metis locals that were in good standing...

I think we’re saying the same thing. We’re planning to go the communities. In the regions we’re going to partner with our Aboriginal governments. We’re also going to go to the regions where the Aboriginal governments haven’t signed on. They’re going to come with us, their regional government, whoever is representing them. Even though they haven’t signed on, we’ve done that before where we’ve gone to the communities. For example, in the Deh Cho we’ve gone to the communities with Dehcho First Nation representatives. Then we’ll be going to all the communities and regional centres as well.

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