Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The committee has been considering Tabled Document 62-16(4). I would like to report progress. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to rise today on an issue I raised yesterday in the House. I find it kind of ironic that the Government of the Northwest Territories is falling back to federal legislation that was passed in the federal Parliament in 1960 to deal with an issue in 2010. I think, Mr. Speaker, it’s a bad precedent that this government is setting on how we manage the affairs of the Northwest Territories by going back to the colonial government of John Diefenbaker.

At that time, we used to have a council which was appointed by Ottawa and ran the government out of...

Does committee agree the Minister brings in witnesses? Mr. Beaulieu.

With that, we’ll take a short break and begin with the Department of Health.

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I’d like to call Committee of the Whole to order. We have several items to deal with: Bill 2, Bill 4, Bill 7, Tabled Document 62-16(4) and Minister’s Statement 47-16(4). What is the wish of committee? Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again, I strongly recommend to the government and this Cabinet to do away with the bickering and get on with the process. We went through a whole process on Species at Risk. We did a good job there. We allowed consultation. We allowed involvement of the aboriginal groups at that table to be part of the drafting team. I think we have to do the same thing in regard to the Wildlife Act. I’d like to ask the Premier: can we put aside our differences, move forward with a table to start these negotiations, get them concluded, and agree that we basically have to...

I think, as a government, we already have an avenue to try to resolve this issue. It’s trying to amend the NWT Wildlife Act to ensure that these situations we’re in now can be avoided in the future and, more importantly, entrench those legal obligations we have to First Nations people in regard to hunting rights, and spell it out in the NWT Act so that we know it’s clear that there is a process that when we have this situation we will have dialogue, we will have discussions and we will have a process to resolve our outstanding issues through a legislative process. Right now we don’t have that...

Aboriginal people have come a long ways since 1960. In 1960 they weren’t even able to vote.

Since then, Mr. Speaker, the aboriginal people in the Northwest Territories and Canada have progressed to a point where we’re finally recognized in the Canadian Constitution under Section 35, which recognized the right as aboriginal people and acknowledges their treaties, Treaty 8 and Treaty 11 in the Northwest Territories, and also upholds the land claim agreements that we negotiated. I believe by not finding the legal opinion on what grounds you made that decision on and not falling back on Section 35...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again I would like to raise the issue I raised yesterday in regards to the ministerial authority to take the action that he did and exactly where did that authority come from. We have the NWT Wildlife Act. We have the NWT Act. We have treaties. We have land claim agreements. We also have Section 35 in the Canadian Constitution that recognizes an inherence to aboriginal rights in Canada in regards to treaty rights and the rights of First Nations people. I would like to ask the question, under what authority did the Minister make the decision to move forward and the...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The reason I am making this motion is, like I stated, this issue has come up year after year. It has come up at assemblies, it has come up in this House and I basically feel that this government has an obligation to provide secure services for communities. Among the essential services we depend on is health care and I think that we, as government, have to find ways of ensuring that those services are being provided fully, not part time or basically provided at random because of breakup and freeze-up.

I, for one, feel that this issue is almost touching on the grounds of...