Kevin O'Reilly

Yes, I am aware that there is provision in the agreement for the federal government to go to the Treasury Board to resolve this on a permanent basis, but there is a way for them to address the issue right now, and that is just simply to increase the contribution agreement for the next year by the amount that was unspent in the previous year. That would allow for, essentially, a carryover. I guess I would like to know from the Minister what he believes are the next steps that he and his staff will take to get implementation of this key feature of the agreement back on track?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to my colleagues. I wouldn't raise this issue in the House if it were about a few thousand dollars, but this goes to the very heart of why Yellowknifers lost confidence in how government was attempting to remediate the Giant Mine. I trust that our government is working diligently behind the scenes to ensure that the federal government lives up to the promises it made to invest in a permanent solution for Giant Mine. I will have questions later today for the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources. Masi, Mr. Speaker.

Thanks to the Minister for that. Come September, when students come back for their program, there will be a whole cohort missing of new students in these two programs. All the teachers will be there ready to go, but they won't have any students. Is that what I am hearing? Why would we reinstate all the funding for the program if we are not taking in new students? Can the Minister explain this?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister of Education some questions about the reinstatement of funding for the Teacher Education Program and social work program through Aurora College. I am just trying to figure out how this is actually going to work. Are these complete and total reinstatements of the funding for those programs? I will start with that one, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

I appreciate the commitment of the Minister. Our government did sign this agreement, as well, so we do have some obligations, and this is certainly in the best interest of Yellowknifers now and into the future. There is some urgency to getting this issue sorted out. April 1st is coming up quickly, so I am just wondering how confident the Minister is that we can get the federal government to live up to this agreement and to ensure that all the appropriate funds are available to invest in the Northwest Territories.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that answer, but it was fairly prescriptive policy direction in terms of items that are going to come before it. Why bother having a Public Utilities Board if we are going to issue that sort of direction? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate all of that. I am just curious, though: where would the revenue start to show up when they start to flow? Is it going to be in the Finance budget or the main estimates? Where are they going to show up? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks for that clarification. I guess my concern and point is that those individuals now have to serve more people. There are more people. It's an amalgamated department, so their efforts are going to have to be spread over a greater number of initiatives and so on. I suspect some of that includes support for negotiations. Is that the case? Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I do have some general comments. I guess the thing that I am most concerned about with regard to this new merged department is the progress or lack thereof that we are making on land rights negotiations.

Back on December 9, 2015, when the Premier was running to become the Premier  I am just going to quote something here. He says, "I propose a joint committee between Regular Members and Cabinet to provide oversight and give direction to our negotiators on files dealing with Aboriginal land and resource agreements. Let's get these land claim agreements completed, all of them...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the answer from the deputy minister. I don't need to lecture him on this, but there are lots of great models out there. The Norwegian pension fund is over $1 trillion now, and there are difficulties with the Alberta one; it's capped. In Alaska, they just give it away, which I don't think is an appropriate model. The governance issue is more than just having people watch over it. How the money is invested, I agree, we want to be fairly conservative because we do not want to lose the principle, but, at the same time, some funds have been placed in environmental...