Norman Yakeleya

The issue I have with the implementation is with the... I guess you look at it in terms of once you settle your negotiations and start implementing, the lay of the land really changes in terms of how our government is going to be in terms of our working relationship. It’s going to change quite considerably. Have we had some discussions in the House regarding the implementation, the potential benefits or potential things we need to be aware of in terms of implementing our self-government agreements?

Plus, this department is at a number of tables here negotiating self-government agreements. That...

Thank you. I, too, also want to let the Minister know that I want to ensure that we have good sound footing in the finances in terms of challenges that we have to acknowledge and to deal with, but at the same time I want to ensure that what’s before us here, this is probably the best-case scenario of all the assessments of our finances with a number of sunsets. You know, we heard from the Department of Health and Social Services in terms of their sunsets of some of the programs that the federal government is not going to fund anymore and at the same time we’re going to provide some pretty...

Just about got it there. So I’ll ask the Minister about realizing the economic potential. Is the Minister willing to share with the House in terms of some initial estimates or just as to what he’s talking about? Is that saved for the negotiations when you have negotiations with aboriginal governments or the federal government? It’s an interesting subject, because just myself in the Sahtu region, there is economic potential for oil and gas, hydro potential, minerals, even the Mackenzie Valley Highway construction. They had an economic analysis done on that and it showed a good return on...

So the Minister is going to table a document on March the 1st and then this triggers a process where there’s going to be public discussion now in the Northwest Territories as to the establishment of an NWT Heritage Fund. Is it six months of discussion with the public or is it going to be something like the other discussion papers we’ve had regarding utility companies? So I guess I wanted to see as to when does the Minister see this discussion on the establishment of the Heritage Fund being concluded or to move to another phase?

I’m good for that page.

Can I just get a brief on the other, on 1-13, $574,000?

This requires agreement in this House to increase the funding. I am not too sure if we even have an appetite for this by the Members. Of course, we have to find funding elsewhere and it’s got to go through a whole process here to seek an increase for funding. I am not sure if there’s an appetite, like I said, to increase the Metis funding for the locals here in terms of their operation. It is a good gesture by this government. No doubt about it. You know, for the Metis people for $13,235. You know how much it costs now to operate an office? Even ourselves as MLAs, we get budgets here to...

No, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, my comments are going to be specific to the comments I heard from the Minister. Through the discussion of details, I will ask the Minister about some things I’d like to know in detail.

Regarding political development in the Northwest Territories, we have some issues that are pretty sensitive right now to the aboriginal governments in the North here. Here, we try to build a common front for political development to look at some bigger issues on the table regarding resource revenue sharing, devolution, the common vision for people in the Northwest Territories...

No, thank you.