Bob McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm pleased to recognize a constituent of Yellowknife South, Gayla Thunstrom. I think I got it right today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That was established during the mandate-setting exercise that we all went through, where the legislation would be developed over two years of time. There are still some outstanding direction that we need to seek. We expect we will do that at Caucus retreat. Essentially, it is what kind of ombudsman does this Legislative Assembly want? Do we want a full-bore one, or do we want one that will assume some of the officers of this Legislative Assembly's responsibilities, such as human rights and associated other responsibilities and roll it into ombudsman? We just need some...

Of course, Mr. Chair.

One of my rules is don't agree to something you don't know what the value is, so we'll wait for the proposal.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, the funding is still there.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. We've been elected for four years, and we're now six months into our term. One of my former colleagues would have translated that into days. Three and a half months, I'm not sure how many days, but I think we're going to get there. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. They were not affected. Those three positions were transferred into a separate division, in Executive called priorities and planning and the other one is a board secretariat for PUB.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. At one time the money to assist, to help administer, was housed in the Executive. It was felt, with all the work that was happening at a national level, that it was better housed in Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations because of the additional support that could be provided inter-governmentally. It was a bit much to have one woman's advisor that was previously in the Executive do all the preparatory work for FPT, woman's issues, and so on. By having it housed in there, it was able to get more support for those meetings. Most of the work is administrative...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we know, the Sahtu has been explored historically for oil and gas but it also was one of the earlier regions where mining first occurred and now we see the need to diversify into mining from oil and gas in the Sahtu. We know there's some significant interest in mining and there's also significant potential, and we are looking at developing regional mining strategies in every region in the Northwest Territories, so certainly we'd be prepared to consider a mining conference in the region. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The positions that we have identified are Nahanni Butte. Fort Providence, Fort Liard. There is one in Trout Lake, but that hasn't been staffed yet. Thank you, Mr. Chair.