Bob McLeod

I would like to clarify once again. We will be releasing What We Heard papers, What We Heard from all of our consultations. We are working on a draft discussion paper. We will be working developing that in conjunction with the social envelope Ministers. We met with Alternatives North and YWCA to discuss the Anti-Poverty Strategy and they were very pleased with that approach.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to indicate that in addition to the workshop that this government funded for $40,000 which assisted us greatly, we also had consultations throughout the Northwest Territories. We had about 250 people present to the group that was doing the community consultation. We had focus groups and sessions in a number of communities. We had regional advisors from every region in the Northwest Territories. We’ve taken that information and we are releasing the document What We Heard today, and over the next few months we will be working within the government and also...

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document, entitled “What We Heard from Northerners about Poverty.” Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We’re going to have a committee of social envelope Ministers, so all the Ministers that are involved with poverty will be directing the development of the Anti-Poverty Strategy. We’ll have a lead deputy minister that will coordinate the direction and make sure that we follow the direction of the Social Envelope Committee.

I’m sure the Member would be very pleased to hear that we’re going beyond what Nunavut has done. We’ve had 33 focus group sessions. My understanding is Nunavut held one workshop and released the recommendations that emanated. We’re going to go further than that. We’re going to draft the strategy, we’re going to have direction from the Ministers of this government, the social envelope Ministers, and when we are finished we’ll have an Anti-Poverty Strategy that will be implemented and hit the ground running.

Mr. Speaker, when our new government first met last October, we agreed on a vision for the Northwest Territories. Our vision is of strong individuals, families and communities sharing the benefits and responsibilities of a unified, environmentally sustainable and prosperous Northwest Territories. Developing an Anti-Poverty Strategy is part of achieving this vision. It is linked with all of our goals and will ultimately form part of the basis for our government’s coordinated approach to social issues.

Mr. Speaker, our goals as the 17th Assembly are all connected. To have healthy, educated people...

Our intention was, in follow-up through the Caucus meeting that was held in Detah with the seven Aboriginal government leaders, that it was our intention to pull together what we feel that we’ve heard and what we’ve discussed with the Aboriginal governments and that we would all sit together and put forward some indication of what we had heard, what the government would be proposing and use that as the basis for a follow-up meeting and for further discussion with the Aboriginal governments. Our expectation was to look at doing something in the next two to three months, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess the approach that we’ve been taking is to reach out to all the Aboriginal governments to find a way to establish better working relationships by finding common ground. We think the best way to do that is to go out and meet with them and to identify what the basis of our relationship should be and how we should work together, and if there are any interests to formalize that arrangement, we’d be prepared to look at that as well.

I guess I’ll answer in a different perspective. The cost to us is it’s costing us $165,000 a day. Over the past five years we’ve seen $300 million flowing to the Government of Canada never to return. So we have a standing invitation to all of the Aboriginal governments to participate if they see fit to do so.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess as part of this process that we’ve undertaken, as the Member may recall, when we all got together as Caucus and set the priorities for the 17th Assembly, one of the priorities was to conclude devolution negotiations and we are in the process of attempting to do so. Thank you.