Floyd Roland

Mr. Speaker, the aboriginal organizations that have a joint letter from the chief negotiators talking about the process they reached and the continued involvement of the aboriginal organizations to this next process and we are waiting to see if they will be continue to be a part of this process or come back to the table, in some cases. We have included and we have sat down with Members to provide them information on those that have been involved until we had the official response of the Gwich’in in April. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The work of this Legislative Assembly on an annual basis covers a large area that affects the poverty of the Northwest Territories in the sense of trying to eradicate it by those programs we have but not going down that path instead to the work that has begun. I committed to Members in this House that we would begin to do our work in Executive. There has been an internal working group established with them. The Executive supports the work and an advisory group of external stakeholders to help. They are looking at the work that has come through. Some of that was recently...

Mr. Speaker, the fact is we have not refused anybody to the table. We have invited all groups to the table, and, in fact, between INAC and ourselves, have supplied up to in the neighbourhood of $400,000 for groups to come to the table and participate. We’ve been welcoming, we’ve been open and invited all groups to the table, and throughout this process groups have been at the table and some have not been at certain meetings until April where it was the Gwich’in who said that they were not going to be formally a part of the negotiation process. Previous to that, they were involved.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The devolution of decision-making authorities over public lands and waters from Canada to the Northwest Territories has been a matter of debate and negotiation for much of my lifetime.

Our strong belief is that NWT residents must have the capacity and authority to protect and manage public lands in the Northwest Territories to ensure that our Territory’s abundant resources are developed in a sustainable and responsible manner, and that NWT residents realize the financial and economic benefits from development in their Territory.

This government has worked to put in place...

I am prepared to have that discussion and see how we can add and strengthen this process. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for that question on the Power Corporation. It was unfortunate the incidents that occurred there, and the power being out for as long as it was and the weather affecting the crews from getting into that community. We must, as the Member has stated, ensure that the community pull together in a very solid way, and a successful way, and ensuring people manage to get power to their homes and keep their homes heated. We thank the community for pulling together on that.

The Power Corporation, on the issue of the outages that have occurred both in Ulukhaktok...

Mr. Speaker, I will get the maintenance schedule for our communities and provide that to Members. I know in our work we do, when we are replacing some capital components, that they do have a schedule for our communities. I will get that information for Members. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, all the work that the Power Corporation does in trying to provide a reliable service to the communities does include a level of redundancy, and that is in the generators, or Gen Set as we call them in the communities, so that there is backup.

The problem becomes more so an issue when we talk about our lines and transformers and so on. They have equipment that they could replace, but it is a matter of getting people into our most remote communities when something does occur like that and we try to marshal the crews to get out as soon as weather permits in some cases to, in fact...

Mr. Speaker, I need some clarification on that. Is there a backup system in place over the summer months? We do have, for example, Gen Sets that are available and we move them in from time to time where they are needed in our communities where there are major outages and major breakdowns. Again, that is marshalled up at the time when we have them set up so that we can move them throughout the Territory. Again, for more specific on what area of backup the Member is looking for. Thank you.

Much like what Members of the Legislative Assembly do every time there’s an election and they gather together to form a vision for this Assembly itself, we will do similar. As we pull their work, there will be similar areas, whether it is around economic development, whether it is around our environment, whether it is around our government structures. As I stated in my sessional statement today, some of those key areas that we’re working on revolve around those very issues and how we can work together to promote a common vision that we could use as northern governments in our approach to, for...