Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On October 14 Canadians will go to the polls to choose the next federal government. There has been a great deal of media attention paid to the campaign, to party leaders and platforms, and to the promises made to Canadians. Some of those promises, in areas such as the environment, taxation and economic development, will have a direct impact on the North.

During the past year the North has had a significant degree of media coverage and an unprecedented number of visits by the Prime Minister and other federal Ministers. Quite clearly, we are solidly on the national stage.

T...

Mr. Speaker, again, we have not had any real discussions with the federal government. I put a proposal on the table for establishing a framework, and that’s the area we’re discussing right now.

Prior to that, probably shortly after we took office and realized that the deal that was on the table was not going to be satisfactory for us here in the Northwest Territories, we started looking at options. We know the federal government has always considered Norman Wells an equity, not a royalty. We started tracking that to see if it, in fact, would be a way of trying to look at how the revenues can be...

Mr. Speaker, as the Government of the Northwest Territories 16th Assembly took office, we set up a new arrangement with regional leadership. We hold four meetings a year where the regional leadership as well as the Government of Northwest Territories can put items on the agenda.

We have been having discussions at that table about devolution and resource revenue sharing, and again this opportunity came up. I made a number of calls, because of the short time frame, to try to get as much of the aboriginal leadership as possible up to speed as to the letter I was presenting. In fact, I did speak...

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, the letter I sent to Members has what we have on the table. We can share all the information about how we came up with this number in the hope of having something further. I would rather do it that way than try to get into a process here and have the federal government decide: well, they’re discussing it there, and there’s no real commitment and no use having any further discussion. I’m ready to share all the information we have, and I believe we have given that to the Members. But we can go through it in more detail or have more questions at that point as well...

I hope I get most of the response here right, as I didn’t quite hear the last part of the question. But I’ll try and respond to what I did hear.

The work that’s been ongoing originally started with an opportunity to sit down with the Prime Minister. I had about 20 minutes with him to give him the idea that we needed to look at other options, to put on record with the Prime Minister that the deal that was put forward by Finance Canada during the last government and that seems to carry on through this government wasn’t satisfactory, that we were not prepared to go there, but there are other...

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...