Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Earlier in the day I mentioned in my Member’s statement about devolution and some of the legislation that this House will be passing. Mr. Premier committed to a public review of the devolution legislation starting soon after it’s passed or after April 1st.
Could he describe how he expects the process to unfold so that the public knows what to expect?
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The honourable Member will be very pleased to know that we’ve already started that process. We have started a process of informing the public, educating the public with a media blitz whereby we are putting inserts about devolution in the media outlets, and as we go forward, once we know devolution will, in fact, happen on April 1st, we will expand that so that we can have more interaction with the general public.
The Premier has done well to engage the four Aboriginal groups. How does the Premier prepare to propose to involve the other Aboriginal governments, especially the Dehcho and the Akaitcho regions, in the review process?
We are having active discussions with the other Aboriginal governments who have not signed on as of yet. Our objective is to have 100 percent of the Aboriginal governments sign on. The federal government has indicated that their financial contributions will cease after one year, but as a government we will welcome the Aboriginal governments that have not signed on yet. Preferably, our objective is within a year, but I think it will be a standing offer.
We have in place with the Dehcho, a working group of senior officials with oversight provided by myself and the grand chief of the Dehcho First Nations, and I think we’re making very good progress. We’re both going through our different processes to do the due diligence and we’re hoping that we will be able to do the same thing with the Akaitcho Government.
I’m pleased to hear progress on the Dehcho and Akaitcho fronts there.
Just with respect to the bills, are there any significant restrictions on amending the devolution laws, and if so, what are they and what are these limits?
For the bills that are passed and given assent to by this government, this government has the authority to deal with them like any other legislation. Obviously, our expectation is that we should at least let them run, have us implement them so that we can get them going. We said we always want a seamless transition, and we recognize that we have some very important responsibilities so that we have to work with the people and also with the third parties and the other Aboriginal governments that are out there so that we can have some certainty and we can have some due process. But the way this government works, any legislation that we have, this government can change it. Obviously, there’s due process for doing that as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. The Premier has indicated that he’s already doing a public awareness campaign, but just in terms of a public review, I know there are many bills and, of course, I don’t expect for them to review them all, but after April 1st when would the Premier begin a more extensive public review process? Thank you.
Obviously, when we discussed this we talked about involving Aboriginal governments. I know that committee also has some ideas of who should be involved. We will take all of those ideas and work with committee to come up with a process that would be acceptable to the majority. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
