Thank you, Mr. Speaker. They were very good for me, first of all, because the Dehcho Grand Chief is planning to organize the community feast for me in Fort Providence at some point in November, and he wants me to visit all of the different institutions there and meet all of the people again. So I was happy with that. I’m very pleased to do so. We’re working on a date.
We had a good discussion on where the Dehcho First Nation is at, the Dehcho process and how his views are on the land use planning framework, how the different governments can interact, and we had a discussion on devolution and constitutional development. We did all this in a fairly short time frame, but I think we were both pleased with the meeting. Thank you.
Thank you. I also heard the Premier say that he’d met with most of the other Aboriginal government leaders. Is there anything he can share from discussions with them, too, beyond invitations to feasts and stuff? I’d be interested in how we’re moving forward on some of the key issues that are before us. Thank you.
Thank you. I had the opportunity to either meet or call most of the leaders, and most of them are still in a positive frame, and they’re willing to continue to have discussions on how to find ways to work together and to see if we can set up a process and define common ground. Thank you.
Thank you. It sounds like a good start, a good follow-up to the Friday meeting. I like the positive stuff. I am looking forward to hearing about progress on the real issues. Will the Premier be updating us regularly on these sorts of discussions on relationships with our Aboriginal government partners? Thank you.
Thank you. It was my intention to debrief with the MLAs on the different Aboriginal governments, the regions. I could also do it collectively, if that is the wish of the Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Bromley. Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about addressing the addictions problem, and perhaps, maybe, we could actually gain ground this particular Assembly and deal with this particular issue. Now, I don’t suspect any Assembly – although it would be nice – or any government ever to fully deal with that particular problem, but the important thing is never to surrender to allow addictions to happen in the manner that it is, as well as the fact of how little it’s actually been happening.
I highlighted the focus of the mandate of a particular department as well as this government, and what is little known by the public is that departments are given specific mandates by the Premier and ordered as marching orders. To shed a little light on that, that’s never really discussed publicly or else we would have known in advance at the beginning of the 16th Assembly about the supplementary health benefits change, as well as a few others.
So my particular question to the Premier will be: when will the development of departmental mandates be seen, will there be engagement with Members on those developments, and when do we expect some type of discussion on those particular mandates that individual departments will get the marching orders on that Ministers will have to comply with? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m anticipating that once we assign portfolios, that we’ll also be providing mandate letters to each of the Ministers and that will be reflected in the business planning process that we do through this Legislative Assembly. Thank you.
Thank you. The Premier didn’t address the question about specific mandates and I highlighted the point about supplementary health benefits. That was a Cabinet decision mandate handed out to the department to fulfill. It didn’t have Regular Members involved in that type of decision.
Suggesting that we wait for the business plans for these holistic mandates is great, but before you put any bologna on the table, it’s the decisions made in Cabinet that are the ones that are the real meat and potatoes of the government’s marching orders. Those are the types of mandates I’d like to find out.
When will the Premier be issuing specific mandates to departments as to the objectives created in Cabinet for that direction? I’m not talking about the Caucus feel good statements; I’m talking about the ones that get down to the nuts and bolts and direction of government. Thank you.
Thank you. We normally wait until we go through our strategic planning exercise with the whole Caucus where we, as a government of the 17th Assembly, identify our vision, we identify our priorities and then we develop our goals and objectives. At that point we’ll be giving specific marching orders to the departments. Thank you.
Thank you. As I said, in the 16th Assembly the Department of Health was given the mandate to start hacking away at supplementary health benefits, and in no way that was ever discussed in a Caucus discussion and in no way that was developed in Caucus visioning. But yet, the Department of Health was marching to the orders given by the Premier of the day. That’s the concern I specifically have here. So is the Premier saying here today, without any doubt, that there are no mandates issued to any of the departments, and furthermore, is he also saying that all departmental mandates will be developed with all Members? Thank you.
In the 16th Assembly we set up a protocol which we all agreed to and we all agreed that there would be no surprises. There was nothing that was identified in the protocol that was going to be approved by the 16th Assembly that would flow into the 17th Assembly. We’ve all agreed that we’re going to get together and set the vision and strategy for the 17th Assembly, and we are committed to that process and we will follow that process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Premier and I’ll ask him this: when will we be seeing a meeting with all three territorial Premiers? They should be brought together to discuss common issues such as our economy, our infrastructure, our health and northern Aboriginal affairs. How can we speak as one voice, as a solid northern voice for the rest of Canada, Mr. Speaker?
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that the three northern Premiers will probably get together before the next Council of Federation meeting. Normally the three Premiers get together to set the stage for the discussions that will happen when all of the Premiers are together. My expectation is probably the first chance for all the Premiers to get together is the end of November. I will have to confirm it, but my expectation is we will probably have a chance to get together before then. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Premier a question with regard to Rural and Remote Communities Working Committee that we established in the 16th Assembly. Would the Premier consider a similar working committee again or even establish the same one on behalf of the small and remote communities? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although I wasn’t a member of that committee, in my estimation, it was a very good committee. It accomplished a lot and it provided for real change and improvements to the small communities. So if it is the wish of everybody here to continue it, I certainly would support it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since we are talking about protocols and kind of laying the protocols and groundwork for protocols going forward for the 17th Assembly, when the Premier just shared about his meeting with the grand chief and a little bit of the content of that and the invitation to go to Fort Providence, it kind of reminded me of a protocol that is very dear to my heart, and that is when people in communities, whether it be the town council, the hamlet council, an NGO, want to entertain or host or bring a Cabinet Minister or the Premier into their community, that they make the MLA the point of contact. There is a no more sinking feeling.
Outside of Yellowknife, you know politicians are everywhere, you see them on every street corner, but when you get out into the regions and into our communities, there is a no more sinking feeling to find out the Minister of Education is doing a tour of the schools this morning and you didn’t know about it. It’s a horrible feeling when you’re a Regular MLA and I think it just shows respect to the local MLA. If you’re meeting with the Sahtu leadership, then Mr. Yakeleya should be part of that meeting and part of that conversation.
I know it’s a small territory. We know everybody and people are going to contact you directly, but out of respect and as a protocol, would you share such a protocol with your Cabinet at the very outset? Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that’s going to be the key element of our communications package. Any of the Ministers that travel to anybody’s riding, the Member or the MLA representing that region or community is made aware of it well in advance and there will be an opportunity. Any time I go to a community I find it only helps if you have the MLA representing help to introduce you to their constituents. I think that’s the way to get things done.
So let’s just give an example: the Chamber of Commerce is having their gala AGM coming up here and they would like to have a guest speaker come from this Cabinet. As a matter of fact, they’d like to have Mr. McLeod as their guest speaker. Mr. Bouchard and I would then hear from that organization and we would extend the invitation to the Premier, on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, and would in fact host, officially host. It shows such respect to the Regular Members if they not only are made aware of it but actually host the Premier and the Cabinet Members when they are in our jurisdictions. If we could have that put in place I think that would show a great deal of respect to the elected Members on this side of the House.
I agree with all of those sentiments and we’ll work hard to make sure that happens. I’ll certainly look forward to going to Hay River; it’s one of my favourite places.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Colleagues, I’d like to welcome a former Member of this House, Mr. Ernie Bernhardt. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just want to follow up on Mrs. Groenewegen’s questions to the Premier on Cabinet coming into our region. Some of our regions that we represent have four or five or six communities. Sometimes when we ask Cabinet Ministers, through their busy schedule sometimes it’s a quick visit in or a quick visit out, or we can do two communities rather than three communities. Sometimes we are left with why our community didn’t get the Premier or Cabinet Minister. We have to do a very careful balancing act on how we sort that out.
I want to ask if he would look at when they do, when he talks to his Cabinet Ministers, there are other factors to take into consideration, but if you make every effort that the Premier comes to our region more than once or twice in the Assembly. That they come at least a minimum of a couple times into our region for the first or second or third or fourth year and that we see them not only once or twice during Assembly time. That they make their visits to our region and, like Mrs. Groenewegen says, stay and visit our people, enjoy our people, rather than do a quick trip in and out.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
We can develop guidelines. I think that if we commit to only going to a region when you can go to every community in the region, I think it would detract from the ability for Ministers or myself to go into a region. A lot of times you only have a day or two days there if you go into a region. If you commit, let’s say, going to the Sahtu and going to all five communities and if you have to spend six days or block off six days to be able to go there, a lot of times it’s very hard to find a block of six days to go into a region.
I think that we could agree to a guideline, but to be able to commit to that we’re going to, between now and the end of this government, go to the Sahtu four times a year or something like that, I think it would be difficult to adhere to. If we could say maybe we’ll try to go once or twice during the life of the government, then we could probably do that.
If we were to work together in consensus building and collaboration, I like what the Premier said to develop guidelines. It’s very easy to go to one location and spend two or three days there. There are communities that only have one location to go to. In Yellowknife you can walk around the blocks. You have the Ministers all living here. That’s where we get the issue of small communities and larger centres. If there are two or three communities you can hit, fine, but sit down and let’s talk about it. There are how many communities you can visit a year? Well, that’s something that I’d like to talk about. Come on. Give us a chance over here in the small communities. Have a heart, Mr. Premier.
I ask Mr. Premier if he’s willing to look at some basic guidelines for the small communities when the Ministers come into our communities, to take some out of your busy schedule and visit the people that put us here, the real people.
I think the reality is we have 33 communities in the Northwest Territories. We always make it a part of our busy schedule to try to get to every one of our communities in the North. Some of my long-term colleagues indicate that to do the circuit of 33 communities it will take 18 months. If you take that into consideration, I think that we’re probably looking at trying to get to every community two times during the life of the 17th Assembly.
That’s something we can talk about. The Premier has put up some very good arguments, but realistically you go to Yellowknife and how long are you here? You can go around any block. You can go to small communities, visit. We have to get realistic here. It’s really good to see Cabinet Ministers when they come into my region. You visit me. I really appreciate that. We’ve had some good meetings with the previous government here. It’s realistic. Sometimes you may not want to travel to our communities because of the weather and other functions, but when they can do it, they can do it. You can go to Inuvik and Smith and Hay River in one visit. We have to get realistic here and not put it out of context. Have a heart when you look at it and come and visit our people. Visit my people. They appreciate it.
Most of my colleagues that have been here before have been to all 33 communities or most of the 33 communities. I like to travel to the communities and we’ll all do everything as humanly possible to get to the communities as many times as possible.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to say to the Premier that I look forward to the humanistic possibilities of what he can do to come into our small communities. I look forward to his position when we ask that question again, either in the halls or in the office or he can come and visit me also.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Extended adjournment of the House to December 7, 2011. I give notice that on Monday, October 31, 2011, I will move the following motion: I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, that, notwithstanding Rule 4, when the House adjourns on October 28, 2011, it shall be adjourned until Wednesday, December 7, 2011;
And further, that any time prior to December 7, 2011, if the Speaker is satisfied, after consultation with the Executive Council and Members of the Legislative Assembly, that the public interest requires that the House should meet at an earlier time during the adjournment, the Speaker may give notice and thereupon the House shall meet at the time stated in such notice and transact its business as it has been duly adjourned to that time.
Mr. Speaker, at the appropriate time I will be seeking unanimous consent to deal with this motion today.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Item 16, notices of motion for first reading of bills. Item 17, motions. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to deal with the motion that I gave notice of earlier today.
