Joe Handley

Madam Chair, it’s true that there have been good words said about various strategies over the years like devolution has been around for years and never borne any fruit. The biggest difference on this one, in my view, is the engagement of the Prime Minister himself. When we talked about the strategy, he brought in the key Ministers. We talked about it and he directed his officials to get to work. This was in the afternoon and he directed that they be meeting the next day on it, starting to work out some of the detail.

The presentation that we made to the federal government included a set of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased, as well, to recognize my brother-in-law from the Yukon and welcome him here. Thank you.

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Madam Chair, yes, I will certainly be respectful of the rights and aspirations of the aboriginal governments. There’s no intention at all to try to take over or interfere in other people’s rights when it comes to devolution or anything else. But we will work with the aboriginal governments. We made that commitment ourselves.

Having said that, we, as 19 MLAs, represent all of the people of the Territories. Hopefully the thoughts of the people in your constituencies all come back here, and we can debate how far we should go or shouldn’t go on various issues.

On the discussions on territorial...

Madam Chairperson, no, there is no package. It’s just a joint letter from the three Premiers.

Madam Chairperson, I don’t have a problem with sharing with MLAs, but I want to check with the other two territorial Premiers as well, to make sure that they are fine with that. Thank you.

Madam Chairperson, I didn’t talk to him specifically about setting up a trust fund or a heritage fund, but I did raise, as part of our discussions on a northern strategy, the need for consideration of resource revenue sharing and the need for us to begin to negotiate an interim process fairly quickly. I might also say that I also emphasised that we don’t want to get some of these kinds of exercises like negotiating in terms of resource revenue sharing arrangement tied up in some long, drawn-out strategy development process. I made that point to the Prime Minister: let’s not slow down some...

Madam Chairperson, I didn’t have time on this trip to meet with them. The schedule was full from when I arrived to the hour I left. I did have a conversation with our staff person in Ottawa and asked her to set up meetings for when I am next in Ottawa. Right now I believe I’m in Ottawa on November 26th or 29th for other things. I do intend to meet with Mr. Layton and Mr. Harper at that time. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, with regard to supps and special warrants, we do deal with them very seriously and there are criteria we want to follow. I don’t think any of us would have any difficulty with taking a look at the Financial Administration Act and seeing how we can make the whole system work better. I want to say though on special warrants, if we put something in that bound the hands of the government too much then we might find ourselves at some point in the future where we just didn’t have the money to spend, because of having to go through some process. You could have a school burn down...

Mr. Speaker, those kinds of gas turbines are new technology. There are warranties on them, but when the Power Corporation looks at new ways of saving energy costs, it sometimes has to take some risk. The turbines that are provided in Inuvik are the same ones that I saw at one time myself in a recreation facility at one of the community colleges in Alberta. There was, by the corporation, as much due diligence on making sure that they were buying something that was reasonably sure. The company that provided them still does business there and does the service work that is essential. There...

Some aboriginal groups are frustrated with talk on devolution because they are not focused on devolution, they are focused on settling their aboriginal claim or process. Some aboriginal groups, on the other hand, are frustrated because they already have claims and we’re not moving the next step. They feel they’re losing economic opportunities and so on. So my view is that we need to continue to negotiate devolution, but do it in a way that it's not going to interfere or prejudice negatively anything with those groups who don’t yet have settled their aboriginal rights; so the Akaitcho people...