Floyd Roland

The Member does have a flair for making statements in this Assembly. Clearly, as the Member is a veteran of elections and election processes, he knows that any election process is a very difficult one, whether it is at a constituency level for the Legislative Assembly or the bigger picture of the Northwest Territories. Of course, we have an interest, as representatives of the people of the North, to try to get the best voice out there and a commitment to what we’re trying to do as the Legislative Assembly. We have, I believe, established a past practice of communicating with potential...

We’ll follow up. Again, we don’t know if an election is going to be called, when an election is going to be called and all that timing, but we have made it a practice as the Government of the Northwest Territories to get our issues out there so that they can be discussed, part of commitments made, hopefully, by potential candidates in a federal election, and we follow it up with Members in writing, I believe, to that rule. We’ll continue to use the same practice. Thank you.

There was no waiving of notice of Members. It is a natural part of the decision to provide an exemption to indemnification where the process that was followed is a standard practice and has been in place since 1999. This decision to do that as a normal part of business -- and governments across the land use this as a tool -- was to address the need to indemnify, in the initial case, the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation and then follow up with the lenders. We could read out exactly what that indemnification meant. Again, in the paper, in the response that I gave to committee we did reflect on the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let’s be clear on this: Cabinet did not overrule Transportation. The fact is this project was under the Department of Transportation and it is the initiative of the department and Minister to bring forward papers for discussions on that process.

Again, the notifications particular to what the Member just stated about the amendment to indemnifications, the list is attached to the regulations. The Minister of Finance can provide a list of those that are included in the regulations. Again, this process does not, it is a normal part of business and it foregoes the 14-day process that we’ve gone through. That was discussed with Members. In fact, again, the letter I wrote to the chair of Standing Committee on Economic Development and Infrastructure and the attachment highlighted the need for looking at a modernization of the Financial...

The process of any construction project coming forward, number one, the specific department would have to do a number of analyses in coming forward with a request for a decision. In this case, the Department of Transportation looked at many of those options and came forward with their paper. Decisions were made based on that.

Now, as well, I must say, as we’re talking about a decision made back in February at the request of Members of this Assembly to myself, I had authorized the Department of Executive to work with the departments involved, that was Transportation, Justice and Finance at the...

Mr. Speaker, I know in the past that the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs has spoken about working with communities on emergency preparedness plans in those communities. We would have to work with the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk to see what plans they have in place. As well, we do have other responses around the region that we do involve when there are large problems, so the weather, for example, the communications issue that affected the whole Beaufort-Delta, we had incorporated our teams to become involved in that. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the issue of the outages in Inuvik and the surge that occurred that caused the equipment to fail in Inuvik was a result of the Power Corporation’s power plant operations. The issue in many of the other communities across the North is the fact that when weather comes into it, we can’t control what Mother Nature does in the Territory. As I was saying, there is funding available through the Housing Corporation Emergency Repair Program which provides up to $11,000 for assistance for low-income earners in our communities. We would be more than happy to try to align the people to the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The purpose of my statement is to update Members on the Taltson Hydro Expansion Project.

Late last year I asked the chair of the Northwest Territories Power Corporation to review the proposed business model for this project. Based on what has been reported to me, it is clear we need to adjust our course.

Earlier today, the chairman of Deze Energy submitted a letter to the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board requesting more time in the environmental assessment process to address economic gaps.

Recent discussions with the diamond mines clearly indicate that...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I think there were some comments made by the Member and I don’t know if this will just turn into a two-way discussion. He has his strong viewpoints. We have the language in the agreement-in-principle. I made a commitment in this House that in fact if there is any infringement on land claims, that those land claims prevail. We’ve said that, that the groups have been included from the earliest days of 2001 in the framework agreement and in fact in the life of its government through our regional leaders’ table and more specifically when the issue of the agreement...