Robert C. McLeod

Mr. Chair, I believe we have put our money where our mouth is. Again I’ll say we have a duty to consult with the Aboriginal governments. I don’t believe we have duty to consult, but we do consult with everybody that may have some interest. Again, as we go through the business planning process next year, if the Members feel strongly that that needs to be included, then it’s a discussion I think we will have to have at the time, but we do recognize that we do try to consult with all interested stakeholders. If the Member feels that we need to fund them all, then let’s have that discussion during...

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair.

My understanding is there have been some preliminary discussions with the City of Yellowknife, but then here again is another opportunity for our group that’s reviewing the whole formula funding to take this particular situation into consideration. We have a good cross-section of folks from across the Northwest Territories, big communities, small communities. I think all our largest communities are represented on this group and the City of Yellowknife has representatives on there. I think this would be a good topic of conversation for them to have, and I think our deputy meets with them every...

Thank you, we will take the Member’s wise words under advisement.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. The Member is correct. We’ll have to make that change and put Tlicho.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is all as a result of forced growth with community O and M funding and the water and sewer funding and grants-in-lieu of property taxes so it’s all forced growth. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Have we jumped ahead to public safety, or are we still on the directorate?

We don’t know exactly what AANDC’s budget was to run their operation. I mean, we do know that we received $67 million from the federal government as part of the devolution and the positions that we were going to be inheriting. As far as exactly what their budget was, we don’t know that. I suppose if we dug around we could find that.

Mr. Chairman, our federal contribution has not really changed much over the years, but the federal government is actually starting to help with some of the travel costs of sending our athletes to the games, like the Arctic Winter Games. The North American Indigenous Games, my understanding is that they have decided to assist with travel costs to get our team down to Regina. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Our plan is to table them during the May/June session.