Joe Handley

Mr. Speaker, that is certainly one consideration I think when we talked about setting joint special committees, the pipeline was one topic that was mentioned earlier on, in the early days of our government. Certainly, I will consider that. I like the idea of a joint committee, and if that's the wish of the Members of this House, then definitely we would give it favourable consideration. Thank you.

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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize visitors from Weledeh and particularly Chief Darrell Beaulieu with the Yellowknives First Nation. Thank you.

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Mr. Speaker, no, I can't show the cost of BIP or the amount of money that was saved by not using BIP in past situations. It's very difficult to pin those numbers down. The issue that we face though as a government and in this particular one that Mr. Delorey is referring to, is the need to have affordable housing. We need low-cost housing that people can afford to buy or afford to rent in the communities. That's our primary concern. How do we get there? One way of getting there is to allow people to obtain housing from wherever they can get it. That achieves our objective on housing. It...

Mr. Speaker, we have policies on a number of areas that we follow. If a Minister wants to make an exception to a policy, then he would have to bring that to Cabinet for approval for the exception. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I think the only limitation we would have on the terms of reference for the proposed committee would be the mandate of this government. If it's within our mandate, then we deal with it. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development does have a section or a secretariat, division -- I'm not sure what it's called -- that deals with Mackenzie Valley development and it deals very much with the pipeline readiness. So that would be the window right now for people who are interested in information on what assistance may be made available. Mr. Speaker, I like the suggestion that was made by the Member for Sahtu today, that we set up a ministerial-lead joint committee that would look at the issues around the pipeline, and that's something that we're...

Mr. Speaker, our interests as a territorial government are within the areas of training, employment, contracting and so on. We are taking the lead on negotiating a socioeconomic agreement. As was the case with the communities in the areas impacted by mining, any impact benefit agreements that they were negotiating were issues that were really within their jurisdictions, so we did not contribute financially to any of the negotiations for those impact benefit agreements. That was something they worked out between themselves and the federal government, and I expect that expectation would be...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There has been a lot of concern and a lot of interest by our government on ensuring that this pipeline moves ahead, and moves ahead in a timely fashion. Since we have gotten into the new 15th Assembly, I had a meeting with the Prime Minister in late January, and this issue was raised with him. My suggestion to the Prime Minister at the time was that the Mackenzie Valley pipeline was critical enough to all of Canada that it really needed to be directed from the central agencies of the federal government, particularly PCO and by federal Cabinet. Since that time, he...

Mr. Speaker, I’ll refer that question to the Minister responsible for official languages. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, that is something that will most likely get discussed at some point by our partners, the aboriginal governments, and it may be something that we want to do at some point here, but I would certainly have to talk to the partner governments, the aboriginal governments in particular, before we would do it. I wouldn’t want to try and do it unilaterally or people will feel we are stepping out too far ahead. Thank you.