Bob McLeod

In our view, and the legal advice that we’ve been given, and with all of the non-abrogation clauses that we have concluded in the Devolution Agreement, we don’t feel that devolution will negatively impact on either negotiation of land claims or of self-government. Those negotiations will continue and there should be no negative impacts on those processes.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I know that the $40 million was put on the capital budget as a marker. It had considerable opposition. It was my understanding that that’s what happened. So we’ll search as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’d suggest that the Member make his case with the committee and that at the appropriate time, through the capital process, he tries to get that amount of money approved.

Maybe if he asked better questions, he’d get better answers. I’ll leave it up to the committee. We did, as the government put it, have that project, called the NWT Law Courts Project, and we put $40 million in the capital budget in 2005-2006. Committee took it out of the budget. If the Member wants to put it back in, he would have to get the support of all the Members of the Legislative Assembly, especially the committee.

I’d like to remind the Member that we don’t do capital planning in this Legislative Assembly. We do it in a separate process.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve worked very closely with the committee and asked the committee to identify the areas that they want the Program Review Office to review. I’ve reviewed the list and I don’t see the Yellowknife courthouse on that list.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m pleased to recognize the leaders of the Gwich’in Tribal Council that are here in the audience. President Robert Alexie and Chief Operating Officer Fred Koe.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize Shirley Firth, a long-time Olympic athlete and also a recipient of numerous awards, including the Aboriginal Achievement Award.

Mr. Speaker, a number of years ago, we did a survey where we looked at every community in the Northwest Territories to see how much money an individual or family would have to make in order to be able to afford to live in a community and I think Sachs Harbour was the most expensive. I think a family had to make at least $93,000 to be able to afford to live there without a subsidy of any sort. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As a government, we are always looking at ways to reduce the cost of living in the Northwest Territories. We’ve taken a number of initiatives over the years. We realize and recognize that the best way to reduce the cost of living is to have improved infrastructure in the Northwest Territories. We’ve also looked at the northern resident income tax credit deduction. We’ve looked at that very closely. We’ve talked to our territorial counterparts to see if we could move in that direction. I think one of the best ways would be to look at our use of energy and to find ways to...