Bob McLeod

As I said, the friendship centres provide a very important service. I’ve recently seen some correspondence where we’ve been asked to lobby on their behalf with regard to having the funding flow more quickly from the federal government. This is certainly one of the areas where the federal government and the friendship centres can work together to help advance and facilitate the aims of the friendship centres.

In practice, generally, FPT meetings and even the council or federation meetings, generally, we share whatever communiques or decision documents that are released with the standing committees and the Members, and we are prepared to continue to do that. In this case, the First Ministers' meeting, there was no communique or documents that were issued, so I would be prepared to brief the committee if we can find the time to do so. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I said, the agenda is set by the Prime Minister so I took some representation to have cannabis added to the agenda by the consult of federation. Carbon pricing was not discussed. It was not on the agenda. The discussion on cannabis mainly followed up on the consult of federation meetings that we had earlier in the year in Edmonton where the Premiers expressed concern about the fact that a lot of work still had to be done in five key areas with regards to implementation of the cannabis legislation.

We were reminded once again that there were still some concerns about the lack of time that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to table the following document entitled "Mind and Spirit: Promoting Mental Health and Addictions Recovery in the Northwest Territories, Child and Youth Mental Wellness Action Plan, 2017-2022." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We will be developing a process for renaming these vessels and will bring forward proposed names for the Executive Council's consideration.

There are some other considerations; for example, in the guidelines for naming of government buildings, we require that it not be named after living persons and other considerations, so those kinds of things have to be developed. I expect that, in the very near future, probably within a couple of months, we would be able to develop a process.

We're very open to looking at different ways, as long as we stick to the original intention of naming vessels to help recognize the long history of marine shipping.

One name that comes to mind when I look in the United Kingdom or in England where they had a competition to name a sea-going vessel and they came up with a name like Boaty McBoatface, or something like that. I think we want to make sure we have a process that we come up with names that recognize the long marine history in the Northwest Territories.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The renaming of MTS vessels to better reflect the Northwest Territories' long history of marine shipping is a very good idea, worth pursuing; however, we have to be respectful of some of the existing names on existing vessels and the reasons behind them. Also, we have to confirm what vessels we will be keeping in the long term, and would only consider renaming vessels in our core fleet.

I have since directed staff of Executive and Indigenous Affairs and Infrastructure to start drafting some guidelines about naming and a process for soliciting nominations. Thank you, Mr...

We will be very pleased to adhere to the terms of reference of the joint committee. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will be speaking to Minister Bennett about the letter received from the grand chief, as well as the letters attached to it from Chief Norwegian of the Jean Marie River First Nations, Chief Bonnetrouge of the Deh Gah Got'ie First Nation, and Chief Cayen of the West Point First Nation. The GNWT and Canada continue to work together on how to advance these negotiations and resolve areas of disagreement for which there is no clarity.

The Dehcho Framework Agreement contemplates that, should an impasse be reached at negotiations, any party can request the use of a facilitator. I understand this to mean that the parties could engage a facilitator to assist them with finding a solution to the impasse that each party could support. Should the Dehcho or Canada request the use of a facilitator, the Government of the Northwest Territories would be prepared to engage the use of a facilitator with Canada and the Dehcho First Nations.