Joe Handley

Mr. Speaker, there may be some cases where NGOs are offering a service that we do not offer. In most cases, I would look at it as the NGOs enhancing the programs and services that we offer by dealing with it in a more specific way, often regionally or by community or simply in terms of the mandate doing it in a more detailed way. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If someone had concerns with regard to the quality of service or questions about the service or programs delivered by the Tlicho Community Services Agency, of course they would go to a board member or they would go to the chairman of the board or they could go to the director if they wanted to. If they felt that this was a matter that they wanted to bring up to the GNWT, the contact person in the legislation is the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs. So that would be their first point of contact and then, of course, they would be referred to a specific Minister or...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Michael Miltenberger will be absent from the House today to attend the Canadian Northwest Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Partnership Ministers’ meeting in Victoria. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you very much, but I think there are a lot people who did a lot of great work on this; much, much more than I did. I appreciate the compliment as well though. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, Tlicho laws apply only to Tlicho citizens. At a practical level, we don’t want to operate two different systems in a small community. I would hope that we would be able to come to an arrangement where we would have one arrangement for all of the people who live in that particular community. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me are Bob McLeod, the deputy minister for Aboriginal Affairs; Sharla Carroll, the director of policy, legislation and communications; and our legal counsel, Martin Goldney, from the Department of Justice. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Yes, Mr. Chairman. I’m pleased to speak to Bill 15, Tlicho Community Services Agency Act. This bill was developed in consultation with the Tlicho Treaty 11 Council team and is the final piece of territorial legislation required to ratify the Tlicho agreement. It follows the Settlement Act passed by the 14th Assembly in October 2003 and the Tlicho Community Government Act passed by our government in June 2004.

I want to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the Tlicho, GNWT and federal negotiating teams that have enabled us to arrive at this final stage of the legislative process.

Before I...

Mr. Speaker, I have a difficult time and I certainly want to read Hansard to figure out what the problem is. If an NGO or anyone we fund has an issue with the agreement that they have, the contract they have, they would go to the appropriate Minister.

I don’t know that there is a big problem that covers everybody, because we do consider multi-year funding, as I have said before, but it is all subject to the appropriation in the House. I don’t understand what the big problem is. Individual agencies though go to the appropriate Minister. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we deal with a lot of NGOs, who have a lot of different mandates. Most of them are ongoing, but some of them do sunset from time to time. All that has to be taken into consideration.

Mr. Speaker, if there are NGOs out there who have been filing and filling out applications every year, filing these with the government and then repeating the process next year and want to talk about multi-year funding, they simply have to go to the appropriate Minister and negotiate that. We are open to that, we do it all the time.

Again, I say, they still have to account for the money on an annual...

Mr. Speaker, I’m not really sure what starving stability is or isn’t.

---Laughter

But, Mr. Speaker, with regard to the issue of multi-year funding, our government has and continues to negotiate for multi-year funding with non-government organizations. We have done that, we’re doing it and we’ll continue to do that. Mr. Speaker, I have to say though that every multi-year funding agreement is subject to the appropriation being passed in this House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.