Bob McLeod

Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Glen Abernethy will be absent from the House today and tomorrow due to a personal matter.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

No. We settled a Deline final agreement, as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We provided, though confidential letter, our response to his very question on the letter dated February 11th to the Member. Essentially, we said if we had additional resources, we would look at it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The $250,000 that was in my opening remarks, I was referring to contracted facilitators. One of the actions that I took in partnership with the federal Minister of CIRNA, where we hired two ministerial special representatives, one of the recommendations was that the government should take much more of a leadership role in facilitating discussions on self-government implementation. That is what this money is for, so that we can try to help facilitate these discussions to advance the finalization of self-government agreements. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. In my mind, there are two ways to deal with it. Probably the easiest one would be if we had additional resources and Detah popped up as a top priority. Probably, that would be the best way to go. A more complicated way is to look at how we provide bilingual services. We pay bilingual employees extra money to provide services in their Aboriginal languages. We have interpreters at work. Maybe it is better to just focus on communities who speak the language. Right now, my preference would be to see if we can find additional resources to see if we can do something for Detah...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We certainly work closely with the NWT Metis Nation. In addition to being one of the tripartite negotiators, we have committed to support the NWT Metis Nation in their efforts to get increased funding, not only for their land claim, but also their cost of negotiations.

I wouldn't say that we have given them advice, but we have talked to them about the size of negotiating teams. Obviously, the NWT Metis Nation will make their own decisions on what is most effective for them in their negotiations. We recognize that the federal government has made different promises, and one...

I think it would be more properly dealt with through the section on regional operations, but if the Member wants to talk about it now, that would be fine, as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. These are costs that we have been trying to carry for the past three years, and every year we have exceeded the appropriation by an average of $344,000. We expect this to continue, if not increase, hence the addition to the main estimates. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

No, that was to the community corporation to help provide for some tourism facilities and products to deal with the influx of tourists brought on by the opening of the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Over the past three years, there has been a significant increase in ministerial travel, primarily because of the fact that the current federal government operates a lot more out of Ottawa than the previous government. Our Ministers have to travel a lot more to Ottawa to meet with their counterparts and to advance our Federal Engagement Strategy and to promote the priorities of the Government of the Northwest Territories. As well, we have committed to increase public engagement, be it Cabinet meetings in regional centres and so on. That is the reason for the increase...