Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I and Members on this side of the House follow the process of the House. At times, yes, we may stray, and that’s when Members call us into line. We respect the roles of Regular Members, of Cabinet of how we do our work. Some Members have been in this Assembly for a multiple number of terms. Mrs. Groenewegen is one of them. She is very adept at presenting a case and leading a line of questioning, as I’ve come to know her work in this Assembly.

But most important to the process, as we do our work as Members of the Legislative Assembly, a number of times we fill different...

Mr. Speaker, the department is going to work with the community. They’re talking about trying to come up with the funds through the research and development portion of the Building Canada Fund, and that work will be ongoing.

As for me committing to taking a project and putting it into the plan, we know that we work with Members of the Assembly through the business plan process, and I wouldn’t say that I personally or as Premier could put a project in there without proper consultation.

I think this work we talked about is going to help us prepare for the next stage, and that is research...

I am aware that the department is working with the community. I understand, in fact, that a meeting will be held in the community next week, I believe on the 15th of October, to have further discussion in this area. At that point, they’ll have to decide how they can move this further ahead.

Mr. Speaker, the Building Canada Fund process is in the system with the Minister responsible for the infrastructure department, Minister Michael McLeod. He committed, through the process, to continue to do this work. I can’t say if we’ll have something absolutely in place by December. The next number of meetings that need to occur between the Department of Transportation and the community are going to be the critical ones to look at how they would proceed on the preliminary engineering and scope of project and at that point decide how they would fund that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The motions of this House do carry weight. We review our options on an annual basis and weigh out, with the funding available, what projects can proceed.

On a specific gravel source to Aklavik, the Member raised this issue with me, as well, in the last session. I sat down with the Ministers on our side and committed them to work with the Member in the community. I understand the appropriate Ministers went into Aklavik this summer, had a meeting, and there were ongoing discussions there. There was a commitment to look at, as the Member pointed out, through the Building...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’d be prepared to try and see what we can do to get this information out to all the students in the Northwest Territories. We ourselves are undertaking a number of initiatives to get on top of the water situation, more so than we have in the past, through partnerships with provinces in western Canada as well as re-energizing the Mackenzie River Basin Board that was put into place a number of years ago. So we’d look at opportunities along with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to see what we can do in this area.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The response I gave in question period yesterday that the Member has chosen to raise as a point of order…. In fact, when you look at the way we do our business as the Government of the Northwest Territories, in this forum there are many times there is reference to the direction the government or myself as Premier or one of the Ministers takes. In trying to defend our positions, we have to at times reference and let the people of the Territories know more of what’s happening.

I think it’s fair debate to respond to issues raised in this House that Members make a point of...

Again, that was when I wrote to Ministers on their strategic initiatives. In highlighting all of those areas — that was back in January — this one, approaches to regionalization of government, was looked at. In one of my statements in this House I referenced the fact that this regionalization of government would look at the GNWT and how it can increase flexibility and responsiveness at regional and community levels. I pointed to the possibility that the honourable Member for Sahtu may oversee that. We’re again re-evaluating who would be leading that initiative. We haven’t structured it. There...

Mr. Speaker, I believe that on a number of fronts we are engaging the public in how we look at business in the North.

For example, even though we may not have the legal responsibility of water management or some of the land areas we are discussing with the federal government, we as the 16th Assembly have engaged with aboriginal leadership on coming up with a water strategy, and we want to work with that. The Minister of ITI has the economic discussion table that will remain open. We have the Minister of Finance having his tables open on the revenue side of the equation in the Northwest...

Mr. Speaker, I can see now where the Member is going. The fact is that we do have to look at our own economies at the community level. We have heard quite a number of times in this Assembly about the need for sustainable development in our smaller communities and looking at what type of business we can get into.

One of the things we do have to look at…. I think we can go right back to the history of the Northwest Territories. There used to be gardens in just about every one of our communities that provided food and the basic necessities for a lot of the families and some of our own…. Well, not...