Robert C. McLeod

Yes, absolutely, we would be prepared to support additional Indigenous guardianship programs in more regions. I should add that, the Sahtu, we have already offered assistance to the Sahtu region in their application for this sort of funding, as well. We believe that empowering the Indigenous guardianship program is empowering residents of the Northwest Territories. I think we are all of the opinion in this Chamber that who knows the North better than the folks who live in the North, so I think the guardianship program would be an excellent program for a lot of people in the Northwest...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Government of the Northwest Territories is committed to a competent public service that is representative of the people it serves. As Members would be aware, the GNWT has a variety of tools to achieve this goal including the Affirmative Action Policy that offers priority hiring to candidates belonging to eligible designated groups that are under-represented within the public service. Recently, the Human Resources Branch of the Department of Finance added two new diversity and inclusion initiatives aimed at further shrinking the gap of under-represented...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to section 64(2) of the Liquor Act, I wish to table the following document entitled "Northwest Territories Liquor Commission 64th Annual Report." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The federal government came up with carbon pricing. Our job was to adjust. I think the Government of the Northwest Territories and the folks have done a great job at mitigating some of the impact it's going to have on residents of the Northwest Territories. As far as the cap-and-trade analysis, I'll have a look and see if that document exists. If it does, I'd be more than happy to share it with Members. Again, I go back to the fact that we are finding a made-in-the-NWT approach.

We recognize there was going to be hardship in families. We had a "what we heard" document. We had a number of...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, during our review of carbon pricing, we did look at whether cap-and-trade was feasible. The analysis at the time was the NWT economy was too small to participate in any cap-and-trade program in any meaningful manner. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The guardianship programs, they are best championed, developed, and implemented by the Indigenous governments. The GNWT, we would be more than happy to play a supporting role, but programs such as these would work a lot better if they are planned and implemented by the Indigenous governments with support from the territorial government.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have not heard of any interest from any other communities; however, that could change. The Member mentioned in his Member statement that there was some federal funding that was announced, and I believe the 2017-2018 budget there was $25 million committed over five years to support a pilot national Indigenous guardianship program. That is for all of Canada. So we are in the process of putting some funding requests in to the Nature Fund to see if we can access some of that funding, and I am sure, as the Indigenous governments and the communities become more...

We are trying to find a balanced approach. Of course, industry in the Northwest Territories, which is very important to the Northwest Territories and our economy, are some of the biggest emitters in the Northwest Territories, so we wanted to work out a program that would benefit them. It goes without saying in this Chamber that people in the Northwest Territories are our priority.

Mitigating the impact on the people in the Northwest Territories, I think, is something that the government has done a fairly good job at. We rolled out our approach to carbon pricing. So there's a lot of information...

As the Government of the Northwest Territories, our priority is looking after the people of the Northwest Territories. That's why we informed Ottawa that we're going to come up with a made-in-the-NWT approach that would help minimize the impact that carbon pricing was going to have on residents of the Northwest Territories.

We would be more than happy to work in partnership with the Indigenous governments of the Northwest Territories as they put proposals together to try to access some of the federal funding. The Member is correct. The GNWT may be best-positioned sometimes to have those talks with the federal government, along with I think they have a couple of residents of the Northwest Territories who are part of a national organization or a national group. Again, the Member is absolutely correct. Working in partnership with the Indigenous governments, I think it's important that we, as a territorial government...