Floyd Roland

Mr. Speaker, as I’ve written to Members and told them, this is a framework. There is not much more detail than what I’ve already given Members on the framework. It is an avenue to open the door for further discussion with the federal government. It includes a partnership among the federal government, the Government of the Northwest Territories and the private sector. I’ve given that to Members. We’ve been working on trying to schedule a meeting with Members. I’m open to when the Members confirm a meeting date. I believe we do have some time set aside here in the very near future.

Mr. Speaker, when I first announced that we’d be prepared to put devolution resource revenue sharing on the back burner, I got some negative feedback on that process. We had ongoing discussions with regional aboriginal leadership and in fact looked at the opportunities when we had meetings with the Prime Minister. I’ve had meetings with the Prime Minister to talk about looking at other options, because the option that was on the table, which Members are fully aware of, was not something we would consider to be adequate here in the Northwest Territories.

Also, Members know that I’ve talked to...

Mr. Speaker, the first piece we and I would get advice from is the work we did as 19 Members around building our vision for the Government of Northwest Territories. That would be the first piece. That’s where we talk about a strong, independent North built on partnerships. That is a key piece of where we’re getting this direction from.

Secondly, it’s from Members as we have discussions and take part either in committee meetings or directly in my office or Members’ offices, along with Cabinet, as we try to come up with what scenarios we can put in place. As well, trying to look at and hire some...

Under the direction of the Public Utilities Board rate structure is the process that’s used. PUB has said that the Legislative Assembly has to give direction in that area. If the Assembly wants to look at how it addresses that, that’s the initiative we’re prepared to sit down and talk about and bring forward to Members for further discussion and hopefully some decisions.

For the actual program itself, doing an internal review, I believe we are going to do that through the whole energy initiative of how we develop power, how we distribute it and some of the alternative sources of energy that are...

Mr. Speaker, I think in every scenario there’s room for improvement. In fact, I offered some opportunities for improvement from the last bit of criticism I had about strategic initiative committees. I got a response from the Chair of P and P on that. I guess that offer wasn’t good enough either.

The fact is that we are trying to do what we can. We have to at times make decisions to proceed in a timely manner to try to keep things moving. I will continue to do that. I’ve already said to a Member earlier that, yes, probably at that time I should have shared the letters we were prepared to give to...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Is there an opportunity to delay this? No, there is not an opportunity, as it’s been filed with the PUB and they’ll go through their process. The fact is that it is dealing with the cost of fuel for previous months and having to make up the shortfall. The more we delay, the cost to the Power Corporation itself continues to climb, and we’re going to have to deal with that. That’s where we are in that scenario. Within the existing operating environment that we have, the Power Corporation has to make up for its operational needs, and the rate base is the only way to do...

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that I’ve given correspondence to the Members that gives details of what framework proposal has been put forward to the federal government. I sent that package, as well, to the regional aboriginal leadership. We are going to have our next meeting with the regional aboriginal leadership at the end of November, and we will be able to have a much more in-depth discussion in that area.

I have already committed to Members, and I believe we do have some time still set aside, to go over this item with committee members. Again, we’ll follow through with that commitment.

Mr. Speaker, the Mackenzie Valley Highway is not $6 billion, if I heard the Member correctly. We know there have been groups doing their work. For example, the Department of Transportation used, I believe, $700 million as the target; that is an old number. We know that the Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation did some work. They talked about $1.7 billion, I believe, in that neighbourhood; that’s their number.

We haven’t progressed to that and looked at those dollar figures. What we’ve been working on is coming up with a framework that would see a continued partnership between the federal government...

Mr. Speaker, the Executive and a number of the other departments that have the information pulled this together. We worked with a number of other people who had access and could give us information on times, and we pulled that together. But it was pretty well done internally on this one.

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the meeting’s happening and the time frame we did…. Again, I go back to the fact that I needed to have an idea that the federal government would take this up and carry it forward and on that basis feel comfortable that we could proceed.

Notification that the Prime Minister was travelling up was rather short, and as Members were aware, trying to get some time set aside to actually have a one on one about the Northwest Territories with the Prime Minister was quite difficult. That doesn’t give any excuse to the fact that we were there. And, yes, at caucus I probably should...