Joe Handley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For sure, I cannot speak for Grand Chief Herb Norwegian. I mean, I’m not 100 percent clear what the deal would be that he would find acceptable. Mr. Speaker, I can say that whenever we come to an agreement like this, there will always be people who feel that a better deal could have been gotten if we had done something differently. That’s always the case. My view is that this is a good deal. If it goes through from current agreement-in-principle status to final agreement, then I think this is a deal that gives us a lot more than what we’d get today, for sure. Is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The short answer is no, this does not affect it at all. The four aboriginal organizations, governments, and our government have signed the deal and I think it sends a strong signal to Ottawa that if we work in solidarity on our positions and we want a share of those resource revenues as soon as possible. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I will never criticize those who choose to take a different path. That’s their choice and if they go along that path and find that they get a better deal, then, as I say, you know, good luck to them; I hope they can do it. Mr. Speaker, on the other hand, the arrangements, the agreement-in-principle we’ve signed with the three land claim groups and the Metis is one that is open and, at times, if people want to join on, they can join on and sign up too, if they choose to go that path.

Mr. Speaker, I’m going to continue working with those who have signed...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m assuming the Member is referring to negotiations on an agreement-in-principle about the bigger issues or on land use and so on. But, Mr. Speaker, no, I don’t have anything specific to report. There was a briefing provided to the Akaitcho people last week, the Akaitcho leaders. The chiefs there, again, the same as with Dehcho, have taken a position that they would like to negotiate their own deal; they feel they can do better on their own. Certainly there is nothing that our government is doing to try to frustrate that. If they feel they can do better on their...

Mr. Speaker, I don’t have a fixed schedule for it, but I can assure the Member that this summer we will do the essential repairs. I don’t know the exact schedule of which will be done where, but some things like leaking roofs and standing water under the buildings, those are things we have to fix right away. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, the report deals primarily with those seven areas of deficiencies. The recommendation in the draft report is that the building be replaced, but that in the meantime we do some renovation to last us five years until we get a new building. There’s concerns with the building in the areas -- I won’t go through all those seven areas -- but there’s also concerns with the site that it allows for too much accumulation of water and is creating problems for us. So, Mr. Speaker, the draft recommendation right now is to do the repairs. We will do them by the Housing Corporation and then plan...

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a Framework for Action on family violence. It includes women; it includes children; it includes men. It’s family violence. We’re not putting a priority on one or the other. We’re looking at all aspects. Now, when the front-line workers want baseline data, I’m sure it’s going to include that discussion; who’s going to be surveyed, what kind of baseline data do we need and so on. But it is family violence, not against any one sector. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I don’t get to all of the coalition and government meetings. Again, there have been a number of meetings. They have, in the Framework for Action - Phase II, there is a whole list of actions in there that have been laid out. The consensus among all the partnership is that this is an opportunity to bring in one caregiver from each community and experts both from the North and from the South. The culmination of those people to take a look at the actions that are identified and determine what is the best way of being able to put those in place. So it’s a conference...

Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I will answer the question with regard to the survey. The survey is being done because we have been working to reduce violence and so on. We don’t have any baseline data, so we need to have a baseline data that we could work from to know the areas where we need to put more effort on public education, prevention strategies and so on. The survey would involve a sample size of 750 respondents and would be distributed amongst various strata within the different communities. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to say that those of us in Cabinet certainly agree with the sentiment that’s expressed here today, that this is not the kind of issue where we have to have…(inaudible)…debate and disagreement, but one that we all have to stand together on.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to point out that our government already does conduct criminal record checks on people who are in positions of trust and also for those who are in highly sensitive positions. Protection of those that are most vulnerable has to be our highest priority, and our government will look very carefully at this...