Floyd Roland

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have a couple of Ministers or, actually, a number of Ministers working on this file between the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources and the Minister of ITI. The response will be a joint one put together. The Ministers will be collaborating as well as seeking input from Members on our response.

Just for the record, the article that the Member has raised in National Post is one where it is an article from a reporter. There is no confirmation, in fact, that the federal government has said anything regarding the pipeline itself and where that project is. There...

Mr. Speaker, the economic analysis of a Mackenzie Valley Highway is something that the Department of Transportation has undertaken and I believe they are prepared to set some time aside with Members to go over that work. Thank you.

We have kept the discussion going at the political level with engagement from the Prime Minister’s office, a commitment to have further discussions around an infrastructure discussion. There has been no formal proposal put in place, but we continue to engage, for example, with the Minister of Transportation and other Ministers around this idea and looking at how we can work with the federal government through the different pots of funding to even come up with, for example, what they have announced up in the Inuvik-Tuk portion of highway work that can be done. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I’m optimistic that we can, working together as leaders across the Northwest Territories. Not just the Government of the Northwest Territories but the aboriginal leadership across this Territory, the community leadership across this Territory can work together to develop a plan to bring that plan forward together as one group of people in the Northwest Territories. Not a difference between who we are and who we represent, but one people of the Northwest Territories representing a diverse group, of course. But I believe if we decide to work at this and put some effort and energy...

Mr. Speaker, I think there’s a lot Regular Members can do in helping us get the message out there, whether it’s to our northern leadership, aboriginal leadership, how we work together, the information, if there’s a request for more information. If you’re hearing back that there needs to be a certain type of information put out, let’s get together and develop a package we can put out there. The message we send to Ottawa is an important one. They pay attention to what we say and do in this Assembly. So I think there’s much we can do together in getting the message out about the North and the...

Mr. Speaker, the Member is entitled to his own opinion no matter where it goes or comes from.

As the Government of the Northwest Territories, the appropriate departments have been involved. We were the best organized, I think many would say, when it came to the hearings. We are involved in the negotiations of the socio-economic agreement. There are a number of fronts we are involved with from Municipal and Community Affairs, ITI and ENR.

Again, the Member is entitled to his own opinion on that. We will coordinate, we will respond and we will engage in Members through that response as we go...

Mr. Speaker, we have stated earlier a number of departments involved in this. There will be a government position. We will coordinate that and we will be working with Members as to what gets done. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Jackson Lafferty will be absent from the House for the remainder of this week to attend the federal/provincial/territorial Justice Ministers meeting in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It was indeed a pleasure to travel to Hay River and meet with the Power Corporation senior staff, as well as all the other employees, and the town council, as well, around this issue.

Things have moved slowly. We are working on a number of initiatives prior to getting right into the ATCO proposal itself. As the Member has pointed out, we’ve just, through the Ministerial Energy Coordinating Committee, been doing the wrap-up on the rates regulation piece that’s out there, we’re about to send off information to Members about the NTPC review specifically.

In the meantime, we...

The process involved, number one is to qualify for some of these areas, and some of these are agreements that are in place that we have to sign with the federal government and then work with the criteria as well. I understand he has come to that stage and is ready to sit down with Members to give them information on that. Hopefully we will be able to get the time together and get more information on that. But it is in the system and it is very close to being finalized in the sense of agreement between the federal government and ourselves.