Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The sustainability of our communities is an important initiative. One of the parts of our vision and goals of the 16th Legislative Assembly is to try to create an environment of sustainability. So there are a number of factors that we have engaged with during the life of this government and one of them is going to be the Electricity Rate Review and the adjustments to our delivery of electricity. The other is in the area of the economic side, under the Minister of ITI, has been, for example, the SEED program, the agricultural program, investments being made in that area...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Deh Cho, that Bill 12, An Act to Amend the Liquor Act, be read for the second time.

This bill amends the Liquor Act to add a provision authorizing an inspector or a peace officer to seize and remove anything referred to in a warrant for the search of a dwelling-house. The use of force will not be permitted in searching a dwelling-house unless specifically authorized in the warrant. Minor amendments are also made to ensure consistency of terminology.

Once again, we are awaiting the response from the chief negotiators’ letter to the regional governments, aboriginal governments and organizations to seek their continued involvement in the final phase of negotiations. At that point there will be a decision as to whether there’s a go forward. So this is all hypothetical about what may or may not happen. We’re waiting and we’re honouring the process and waiting for the response of the regional organizations and governments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There has been no decision on our part to exclude anyone. In fact, the process that we’ve entered into through the regional leaders table is to set up a regional leaders table specifically. So the Sahtu has been included. We don’t go to the Sahtu to say how they then work from the region down to their community levels, like we don’t do with the Gwich’in or the Inuvialuit or the Dehcho or any of the groups. We worked at that table to have the regional leaders bring their issues to the table.

This agreement that is out there has been worked on since 2001. We realize that...

Mr. Speaker, as I have mentioned earlier during our process, the program review office, we have begun that task of looking at specific program areas. As we get through the initial work of that group, we will go to committee and ask for additional information where we can target certain areas as well. That is one of the avenues we could do that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As we go through our process of budgeting and business plan development throughout departments and we go through a process of receiving feedback, we try to address the concerns that come up on areas of shortfall or requests for change in that planning, and we’d be prepared to do the same if Members and committees were to recommend some changes or development of new initiatives within our processes. The area of the ombudsman has not been a part of Executive’s business plan. I know it’s come up in discussion with a number of departments but, again, we haven’t had a formal...

In fact, through this process we have looked closely at the Yukon agreement and that process, and have ensured and worked at the table with the aboriginal governments and representatives on ensuring that this process we’re involved with to a much greater extent involves aboriginal governments in the future of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The letter has been received and we felt we were going to address that through our regional leaders meetings and some side meetings that we’d have there. With the recent release that has come out, we will put it instead in a formal response back to the president of the Gwich’in Tribal Council.

The draft AIP that’s been sent out to the aboriginal governments and organizations for their input has been done because the mandates of the chief negotiators have breached. It is up to the governments to decide what the next steps are and we’re in that process of making those decisions, waiting for the input of the aboriginal organizations and governments for their response to the chief negotiators’ letters. We’ll have to decide what the process is going forward from there, and when it comes to some of the issues that I believe are outstanding are ones that I believe would be identified...

The process that we’ve gone down, in fact, on the basis of the AIP started off fundamentally in 2001, has worked through, in fact, in the 15th Assembly, four groups signed on with the government-of-the-day to forward that draft on to Canada and the Sahtu was included in that signing at that time. We, in the 16th Assembly, had halted the process to start the regional leaders table to try to build a more common approach, and when the re-engagement happened with the federal government, there was a number of technical sessions and negotiations that were involved at the regional level process and...