Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I talked about devolution. I want to ask the Premier some questions. I want to ask him in terms of the mandates for going forward, when and who decided that the Aboriginal governments won’t have direct participation at the tables when they were negotiating the draft AIP? So far what I’ve been told and what I’ve read is only the GNWT and the federal governments were negotiating and they drafted the AIP. The Aboriginal governments were briefed from time to time, but they didn’t really have a seat at the table per se in terms of the direct negotiations on this important deal.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Those mandates set in the original days when the framework agreement was struck out in 2001 and renewed as they began to work, I believe, in 2004. Our process, or the process we’ve used, has been in place from those days and there were different times at different levels of discussion. For example, there was a Government of the Northwest Territories and a federal government issue that was strictly bilateral. Those bilateral discussions were held between the GNWT and the federal government, but it included Aboriginal governments on those specific issues. They were part of that process. At all times, though, as I have been informed, that even the bilateral discussions that were between the GNWT and the federal government, those discussions were brought to the table for all participants to review. Thank you.
Thank you. I guess there are the various figments to the history of the bilateral agreements and negotiations. So I’ll leave it at that.
What I’ve been hearing is that the Aboriginal governments that are not signatory yet to this agreement have some questions and they want to assess and analyze the agreement. My understanding is that if we have some of the Aboriginal governments come on side, then that puts them into some funding arrangements. If they do not come on side to sign the AIP, then there’s no funding available to them. Is that a true statement to the Premier?
This would be true for the GNWT. If we did not sign the agreement-in-principle, we would not have access to the $4 million that would help us in the transition work going into negotiations. We will have to come up with our money in negotiations as a Government of the Northwest Territories. The federal government has set up $3.9 million for Aboriginal governments to prepare for the work and the transition into negotiations. As they sign that, they will have to sit down with the federal government to work out that funding arrangement. Thank you.
Thank you. Can the Premier explain where the thousands of dollars that have been given to the regions went if it wasn’t to explain the devolution?
The Member is asking the GNWT to explain where that money went. That was co-funded by the GNWT and the federal government. If I understood your question correctly, I hope that it went towards the work on devolution, the prepatory meetings, some of the negotiations specifically.
In the life of our government, we’ve got a number of agreements in place. One at the regional leaders’ level, which helps bring them into the regional leaders’ meeting, supports two at a time. Then specifically within the Executive there were agreements in place to help fund the devolution meetings, and that was to help the groups organize and structure and review the materials that they needed to review. We’d have to go to the groups to find out exactly how they deal with those funds. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Can the Premier tell me as to why the AIP wasn’t released earlier in terms of letting the people understand and read it, rather than being posted on the CBC website? Just recently it was released to the public.
Thank you. First and foremost, the process that’s been well established within the Northwest Territories right from self-government talks, land claim talks to this agreement-in-principle, the parties have been involved. Aboriginal governments and groups have been involved in this process. They’ve had their hands on the document for years. The specific document that was signed off by the chief negotiators and the letter sent to myself and Minister Duncan and additional letters were also sent to all the regional leaders in September. So we were waiting for their response through October and looking at it on a going-forward basis as we were preparing to get ready to inform the people of the Northwest Territories what this deal would mean and how we would go forward.
Again, this is an agreement-in-principle. It is a non-binding agreement that sets the framework for going forward to final negotiations. Now we’re starting to do our process and get the message out to the people of the North. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
