Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Tom Beaulieu will be absent from the House today to attend a funeral in Fort Resolution. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. They were very good for me, first of all, because the Dehcho Grand Chief is planning to organize the community feast for me in Fort Providence at some point in November, and he wants me to visit all of the different institutions there and meet all of the people again. So I was happy with that. I’m very pleased to do so. We’re working on a date.

We had a good discussion on where the Dehcho First Nation is at, the Dehcho process and how his views are on the land use planning framework, how the different governments can interact, and we had a discussion on devolution and...

Thank you. Normally staff from Ottawa don’t really become involved until such time as we get fairly close, because we need staff from Ottawa to write the Cabinet decision papers and also when we get closer to the actual transition to have federal staff to help with implementation. So I’m not sure what the Member is leading to when he’s asking for having federal staff involved, because normally they’re involved at the negotiating table and we have our negotiating people as well. So if you’re suggesting to use federal people to reach common ground with Aboriginal governments, then we could do...

My understanding of the dates or timelines that you’re quoting is that those are just guidelines. In our discussions with the Aboriginal governments, we are not talking about those kinds of specific details at this time. We’ve been talking about how to try to find ways to find some common ground and to start working together, and we’re hoping to be able to start to do that and to follow up on the meeting in Dettah by getting together again soon, hopefully before Christmas.

I think the reality is we have 33 communities in the Northwest Territories. We always make it a part of our busy schedule to try to get to every one of our communities in the North. Some of my long-term colleagues indicate that to do the circuit of 33 communities it will take 18 months. If you take that into consideration, I think that we’re probably looking at trying to get to every community two times during the life of the 17th Assembly.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’ve only had two meetings, one before we were sworn in and one since we’ve been sworn in, so we haven’t had an opportunity to discuss it yet, Mr. Speaker.

I agree with all of those sentiments and we’ll work hard to make sure that happens. I’ll certainly look forward to going to Hay River; it’s one of my favourite places.

My understanding is the condominium association had finalized the proposal. I haven’t seen it myself, but if there is a final proposal that has been brought to the city, then I expect that as soon as we assign portfolios and Ministers have been briefed up, that we could look at that, probably within the next few months.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although I wasn’t a member of that committee, in my estimation, it was a very good committee. It accomplished a lot and it provided for real change and improvements to the small communities. So if it is the wish of everybody here to continue it, I certainly would support it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I met with Mayor Van Tighem from Yellowknife, we talked about the Northland issue and the fact that the estimated cost to fix the problem at Northland was somewhere in the neighbourhood of $18 million. The Northland condominium group had indicated to the city that they didn’t need to have paving and so on that had been planned for the area, so that would shave $2 million to $3 million off the project. Also, if a loan guarantee was provided so that the city could make a low rate, they would save a further $3 million to $4 million. That would reduce the cost by half...