Floyd Roland

The process we have established, the work that is being done, we’ll have to look at that, look at the inclusion of the business sector as well, trying to bring in as many of the groups from around the Territory as we do this work, and, of course, coming back to Members as a follow-up as we continue on in this process.

As the Member stated, in preparation for doing our work and leading up to what the 17th Assembly may be looking at or what they may implement, we will have to look at how we include this work in our transition work that’s going to happen. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I’d have to look at the budget that we had set up for the work that’s being looked at. One of the other things is the fact we’re trying to be as inclusive as possible from around the whole Territory and have other people work with us as we move forward on the Anti-Poverty Strategy. I will have to look at the budget to see what is available. Thank you.

We have started our discussion, following some questions by Members, around the makeup of that and are looking at including some of the business community as well as the Department of ITI. So we’ve started to have those discussions on bringing the business side in. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, I have not heard yet from the working group. Thank you.

We will consider what can be done and if that is one of the better ways of clearing the air or if we just continue to respect the process and honour that.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Power Corporation does have a claims policy in place that is available to every community as different things affect outages or problems. There have been many claims put in from different customers across the North. The reason that Inuvik is one that has been publicized is because it hit a large part of the community as a result of the outage and an overvoltage situation that fried many of the power bars and so on. In fact, when I was up in Inuvik it occurred and I happened to be in my office when my office one went out as well. Because it hit such a large part of...

That is a fair bit of detail that we’d go into, but the fact is we as a government have the work done to look at the delivery in today’s environment. Leading up to 2007, the government-of-the-day did that work. We also looked at that work and the consideration of what really needs to be done in the North was also put in place, a business case, and the negotiations around the AIP began in that manner. We have looked at those jobs. We have looked at what needs to be delivered and built the negotiation based on that. As I pointed out, the chief negotiators of both sides have signed a letter now...

Although it’s put out in the public, it’s interesting, I believe, as it first went out, CBC said it’s out there, but it’s still a confidential document. I don’t know how they could put that disclaimer in there. We have a process and we’re trying to honour that process. There are other partners involved in this and I want to respect them, being the aboriginal governments and the federal government. At some point we’ll have to make a decision on how we go forward. The typical process we’re involved in is laid out. It’s the normal practice. We’ll continue to use that.

I think the more important...

In my many years as a Member of the Legislative Assembly, I have heard about the fact that governments are not organizations, they are governments. Aboriginal governments are aboriginal governments. This government is treated and sat at a table in a scenario of government to government when it comes to aboriginal governments. We have helped fund those to be a part of our discussions as we go forward, helped influence what we should package together and how we go forward. Through this process and leading up to this, those that wanted to be at the table were at the table and influenced much of...

What the Member is requesting of me is one that the Executive Council will have to wrestle with as we hear the response back from the joint letter that went out to the negotiators as we hear back from Members of the Legislative Assembly on a decision forward. The fact that this agreement-in-principle highlights the working relationship government to government, After this, if a future government is to say yes, this agreement, the final agreement is done, we’re going to accept it, what we need to do is decide how we’re really going to negotiate. What we’ve talked about for almost three decades...