Joe Handley

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, as this particular issue on missile defence becomes clearer in terms of what is being proposed and how it may impact us, then certainly we would be ready and willing to brief this House. In the meantime, I want to focus on ensuring that we are at the table when the federal government moves forward on the proposed northern strategy. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, no, we don’t have a policy on the federal government's programs. Those would be issues outside of our government and not things we would have policies on. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the lead department on these kinds of spills is the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. Having said that, Mr. Speaker, because of the size of the spill, if Environment Canada chose to become involved, they have the right to become involved as well because of the size of the spill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, yes, I have had discussions with the Power Corporation about security and having someone to make sure that these kinds of incidents don’t happen if they can at all be prevented. Mr. Speaker, we have to recognize as well, though, that the generators out at Jackfish do not operate many hours any more because of the mine shutdown and because we have bought the Bluefish hydro project. We are, in the city here, now largely a hydro power serviced community. The only times that the Jackfish plant generators are running is for routine maintenance; the need for them to be started up...