Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I must say that in initially meeting with the new CEO for the Power Corporation it was refreshing. His experience in that sector of the business and dealing with many customers is, I think, a breath of fresh air, as I see it, in reaching out to our customers in the Northwest Territories. Again, I’ve had discussions with both the chair and the new CEO to discuss the issues around customer relations, and we’ll follow up on that, as well, to ensure that we work on improving that relationship. Thank you.

With the new CEO, Mr. Axford, in house now in the Northwest Territories, he’s been looking at the operations of the Power Corporation, their structure, how they deal with our customer issues and our response times, so I expect that in the near future I would sit down at the next board meeting with the CEO and the new chairman and the board to go over some of the work they’ve done and see what flows from that. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the identification and the categorization of waste sites, those were decisions made by previous governments that, as I said, the preliminary work was done. Quite clearly, we leave the responsibility for decisions made by the federal government prior to the signing of the final agreement is their responsibility needing to go forward, but they still have to share that work with us and come up with a budget that we would have to negotiate on dealing with the full remediation of those sites or that they would remain holding onto the liability of those sites. For example, by signing...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member’s statement earlier, leading up to these questions, made a number of comments about secret negotiations and so on. I will say for the record that there were no secret negotiations. All bilateral discussions that may have happened between the GNWT and the federal government, specifically because there are areas that we clearly are for or would be, those issues and discussions were shared at the main table with all of the partners that were at the table.

As for signing this agreement, there are many things to be negotiated as we go forward. One of those is the...

Those that have made application, I will ask on the results. The first thing, as I had committed to earlier, was the total number of complaints or applications that were sent in, what were the responses to those applications and if there are any outstanding issues. I will get that information back to the Member. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Power Corporation does have a policy in place on dealing with customers who have had problems within their homes and can file a claim. I don’t have the level of detail with me that I could respond to the Member but I will get that for the Member. Thank you.

The process we’ve engaged in has been inclusive and open to quite a number of avenues in the work and up into the agreement-in-principle that was signed. That included groups that would officially call themselves observers but had representatives that influenced some of the discussion and the way the language was written.

As we go forward, though, towards a final set of negotiations, as there will need to be bilateral discussions, so formal discussions on, for example, the jurisdiction sharing about how we share our arrangements, how co-management bodies can work together, for example, or the...

Well, first and foremost, let’s not discount our own staff within the Government of the Northwest Territories from having a good level of input and credibility when it comes to this kind of work. It’s a mix of all services, whether it’s NGOs, but let’s not discount the work of our own people that are in the trenches, as well, day to day. I think bringing those two together can help at the end of the day and our goal is to have the work done before the end of the life of this Assembly.

Thank you. The work that we need to do now from a Government of the Northwest Territories side is we’re involved heavily in the field of dealing with the poverty issue in the North with quite a number of departments: the Housing Corporation; Education Culture and Employment; Health and Social Services. We’ve got quite a number of others: ITI, Justice, in some form or another. So we need to look at our end of the work that’s being done and relate that to the work that’s been done by the NGOs as well. So the work they’ve done will help inform the work that we’re going to and are doing.

I think...

Thank you. First and foremost, the process that’s been well established within the Northwest Territories right from self-government talks, land claim talks to this agreement-in-principle, the parties have been involved. Aboriginal governments and groups have been involved in this process. They’ve had their hands on the document for years. The specific document that was signed off by the chief negotiators and the letter sent to myself and Minister Duncan and additional letters were also sent to all the regional leaders in September. So we were waiting for their response through October and...