Joe Handley

Mr. Chairman, I will ask Ms. Snider to explain that budget item. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, on the travel there are negotiations travel, first, at $555,000. Any of the staff who are involved in negotiations, whether it’s devolution or land resource agreements, self-government agreements, would be travelling with the exception of secretaries. There are 42 employees in the ministry. Three are secretaries, so essentially 39 people at some point probably travel.

The other category I had was the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs related travel at $213,000. This is for department people and the Minister for participation at ministerial meetings, annual assemblies, federal...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Economic Development Advisory Forum is made up of a number of representatives, mainly from the business sector, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal business sector. They have been meeting for the past couple of years under the Intergovernmental Forum activities. They report both to the government and to the Aboriginal Summit. I have had one meeting with them. The Aboriginal Summit is just in the process of reorganizing themselves, and I have not pressed them on any changes they would want to make to the Economic Development Advisory Forum's mandate. The...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Certainly from a technical perspective, the transmission issues are doable. We have checked out that a 400 and some kilometre line would be necessary, is feasible, particularly if we have all of the mines on contracts with us. We do have other issues that we need to deal with in terms of the length of contracts and so on. From a financial perspective of the cost of putting a line from Taltson to the diamond mines, it is expensive, it is in the neighbourhood of $170 million. The viability of that, or the feasibility and the economic viability is determined largely...

Mr. Chairman, a decision was made a couple of years ago to hire two additional lawyers in Justice to deal with the negotiations. We have been picking up the travel cost for the services that are provided. Mr. Chairman, I believe this is fairly common for Justice to bill back to the departments their legal costs. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, as I mentioned before, this is looking for expressions of interest to determine the extent to which there is interest out there by deliverers to bring those kinds of programs forward. When we look at our fees and payments, corporate human resources or Executive has an interdepartmental training and development budget of $350,000, but that is for more than just the delivery of these government specific courses. So in terms of ballpark we are looking at something less than the $350,000 for sure, but we don’t have a specific amount at this point until we receive the expressions of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me are Mark Warren, assistant deputy minister of the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs; and, Steve Iveson, executive director for negotiations. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I'm assuming we're still talking about the $95,000 for those two contracts. Both of those are with firms in Ottawa. We're going back into something that was done in the last government. I believe that there was no formal tender for it as such, although there would have been a number of interviews with firms who have the ability to deliver on the service and expertise that was needed and it was narrowed down to two firms who, it was felt at that time, could serve our needs. We will continue to assess their usefulness for our purposes as things move along. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Member is correct, that there were 22 recommendations in the Robertson report. Franchises certainly was one of them. That is something we are looking at, and certainly will take into consideration the issue about having people come in and try to provide energy services in selected communities. So our intention as we put together our action plan on the Robertson report, which we fully intend to do, is to prevent that kind of cherry picking from happening. But at the same time, also leave it open for northerners who may want to try some alternative methods of generating...

Mr. Chairman, that is certainly within the mandate of the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and myself as Minister responsible. While there have been discussions and I have met with the Premier of the Yukon on it and we've had meetings with the legal counsellors of the Acho Dene, as well, there hasn't been a significant amount of money spent in that area yet, but there could be in the future. Thank you.