Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our previous Minister — I think it’s two governments ago — was at the forefront in advocating that we take a joint review panel approach. It was felt that going through regulatory review involving 13 boards and agencies would take too long, and as such, we advocated a joint review panel approach.

Certainly that is our intention, and we’ve been getting a lot of feedback from the campers. I’m also pleased that the Member supports the fact and the recognition that we need as many new sites as possible.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member knows, we had an election in October and this resulted in a change. As well, in the North Slave region we had a wholesale changeover of regional managers.

Mr. Speaker, boards and agencies generally operate on a different basis. I think that we would certainly request that the Health Minister direct boards and agencies to deal with cultural awareness, but the boards are independent and would have to make that kind of decision themselves.

It’s an area where it’s not as straightforward as just asking them to fulfill requirements with regard to cultural awareness. But that’s something that I’ll discuss with the Minister of Health.

Mr. Speaker, with the difficulty in attracting some of the frontline workers, it’s certainly something that we would like to see — that they have cross-cultural training. But unfortunately, the reality is that sometimes this cross-cultural training is not made available until after the fact. The ideal would be for frontline workers to receive cross-cultural training.

We are open to looking at all possible options and with the individuals that are potentially affected.

We have been in discussions on a number of occasions with Mr. Neil McCrank, who is reviewing the regulatory process on behalf of the federal government. We’ve also had discussions with Minister Prentice and his point man on oil and gas for the Northwest Territories, Mr. David Hudson.

We recognized early on that the writing of the report of the panel could be facing delays, because there was only a four-month window for the report to be written. We expected that the April report would likely be pushed back, and that has come to pass.

But the main issue was how do you try to speed up a panel that...

We did review the terms of reference and we did have input. For those areas that are under the Government of the Northwest Territories’ responsibilities, we specifically dealt with those as well.

That concern has been raised by many people, so we’re reviewing the whole reservation system. We’ve already made a commitment that we weren’t changing anything this summer, so we’ll look at changing it as part of our overall consultations, unless we can find a better approach quickly.

I did write to the Member, as the chair of the Economic Development Committee, advising him of what we were looking at. So I was pleased with his response and suggestions.

As I’ve committed publicly and I’ve committed to the committee, we will be undergoing full consultation with the campers, the aboriginal governments, and all of the public before we make any changes.