Caroline Cochrane

Thank you, Madam Chair. Every one of the motions that were brought forward by the standing committee were brought back to the Indigenous governments. The comment was made that this will be the Premier's legacy. This is not the Premier's legacy. The Premier did not direct this. This was done at the table. The GNWT was one member at the table of the Council of Leaders. This is the Council of Leaders legacy, Madam Chair.

So within that spirit of working together in consensus, every single suggestion was brought forward to the Council of Leaders table. When we brought this motion forward and said...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to start and then pass it to Martin Goldney for additional comments.

The role of the executive so within consensus government system, Madam Chair, Regular Members, all of us 19 Members, determine our Cabinet. And the reason we pick Cabinet is so that the Cabinet can take oversight of the government programs, developing legislation, etcetera. What was

Thank you, Madam Chair. We agreed to work with Regular Members on developing the statement of consistency. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Am I just answering the one question or the two? Just the one.

Yes, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As stated earlier, the first role of one of the first roles of any Legislative Assembly is choosing your executive council, who are there to represent the interests of all residents of the NWT. And so therefore, Madam Chair, I would challenge to say that MLAs have to have faith in those that they elect as the executive council.

Madam Chair, there are I think we need to step back here a minute and look at it. If we we're signing selfgovernment agreements with Indigenous governments. If we really believe in selfgovernment, then we have to recognize that these Indigenous...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What can be addressed in what's going to happen in the next six months, I can't speak to that, Mr. Speaker, because there will be an election within the next six months. So what I can speak to is by the end of this government, we shall have that team organized and put into the Executive and Indigenous Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, though, this cannot this issue is huge and it needs to be addressed. The reason that we did the homelessness strategy, the reason that we pulled it into the executive is because it's been off the side of the table for departments for many, many...

Thank you, Madam Chair. So this concept of shared agreements comes actually from the BC legislation, the United Nations Declaration there. We had much discussion on that at the working level when we were drafting this bill.

The agreements might come in different forms. Martin Goldney can expand on that later. We don't know yet. We haven't had that experience and that's why we were careful with it as well.

But I do want to say, Madam Chair, that there's many agreements. The MLAs are not always part of every single agreement that the executive branch makes. For example, we make agreements with...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can't really speak for the next government or governments to come. The Premier does have the option to be able to shuffle departments, move Ministers as appropriate, consolidate as we did, or make departments bigger. That's always under the purview of the Premier. However, I did my best, Mr. Speaker, to try to make it sustainable within the Executive and Indigenous Affairs, and that's why purposely I brought the homelessness strategy under the Premier's portfolio in this government. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There is a difference. And, Madam Chair, the Member is right. There is a Regular Member that's invited to the Intergovernmental Council table, and there's a Regular Member that's invited to the Council of Leaders table. Those tables, both the Intergovernmental Council and the Council of Leaders, are the leaders of the governments GNWT, Indigenous governments, and organizations. They are chiefs, Ministers, Premier, presidents, whatever chair, whatever the title may be. The difference, Madam Chair, is that this is an action plan committee. There may be the occasional...