Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories firmly believes in the inherent right of aboriginal people to manage their own resources and govern their own affairs. For years we’ve been active participants in the land claims and self-government negotiations that have seen real power and control pass back to NWT aboriginal governments. That commitment has extended to devolution negotiations as well. From the beginning of our negotiations, we have made sure that aboriginal governments have had every opportunity to participate in a meaningful and active way.

The current...

The agreement-in-principle that is before the regional leadership for their comment and feedback as well as that is before the federal government and ourselves, allows for that government-to-government bilateral process to proceed once an agreement is signed. There is a process built in to have the bilaterals with each group as we progress, if that is the decision made.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The process we’ve engaged in is we’ve already made calls to the regional leadership to see if we can pull a regional leaders’ meeting together to discuss this issue. We’ll be following up with a letter today.

This process, as I said in my statement, of the engagement, role, involvement from chief negotiators to legal counsel from the aboriginal groups, they have been involved in this. They are well aware of what’s in there. We are as well. In fact, as I stated, we stand by the government’s position on self-government and the inherent right. We stand by that. This agreement-in-principle will not take away authority from any aboriginal group that has their rights established through treaty and the modern treaties, being the land claims and self-government agreements. We stand by that in our...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a long-term resident, very busy and very active yet, Ms. Cece McCauley, who was recently elected as the president of the Norman Wells Land Corp. Also with her in the gallery are Larry Tourangeau and Margaret McDonald.

The process we have; one, Cabinet has yet to make a decision on this document. I think at that point, then it becomes something that we could either stand behind and support going forward or it becomes a moot discussion that there is no moving forward. But I agree with what the Member stated about the fact that we have come to a place, chief negotiators have sent a letter saying they’ve reached their mandate, this is it, time for a decision to be made Thank you.

We will have to sit down and look at what a plain language document would look like, the timing of getting it out, the method, going to Members for your input, as well, to see if we are on the right track and ensuring we are protecting the process we are in right now and informing the public as to the work that has been done.

As the Member pointed out, we started today to set the record straight, so to speak, on some of the information that’s gone out there. We are looking to do a number of other statements. So that is one of the ways we’ll do that along with this public document that we’re...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Government of the Northwest Territories is only partway through a process on a devolution agreement-in-principal that has not yet concluded. Cabinet has not yet formally considered the proposed agreement-in-principle and we are still waiting to hear from aboriginal governments. While we have not made a final decision about next steps, I believe that it is important to take some time now to speak to some of the misconceptions and misinformation that have arisen since the leak of the proposed AIP a little more than a week ago.

Much has been said and reported in the...

In respecting the process we have with the partners with this, the aboriginal governments as well as the Government of Canada, decisions are yet to be made on this and I don’t recall in the previous governments or whether it be with ourselves or other partners in this where a debate would happen on an agreement-in-principle.

We have almost 15 different tables of negotiations going on across the Northwest Territories about self-government and land claims and resources and those matters. As we go through those and a decision is made to sign an agreement to get to the final stage of negotiations...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The process that we would have engaged in has a normal procedure that goes through with an agreement-in-principle. We would be preparing a public paper for their consumption in the areas of the AIP, what it means if there was a decision to proceed. Seeing that, as the Member pointed out, it is out there for public consumption and there are many comments being made now that some are made more in just not understanding the full document or out of context, and some positioning being taken out there by others, that we feel we will have to come up with a plain read document...