Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in follow-up to my Member's statement, as you recall during our election period, I have had a lot of concerns about negotiations, whether its self-government or land claims. Some of these land claims and self-government agreements have gone on for almost 20 years now, with spending in the neighbourhood of $20 million, and then, whether it is a land claim group or the government that is negotiating, they receive that much less. There are some challenges, for example. The reason I know this is eight years ago, these same issues were a challenge at the time, whether it is core principles and objectives or taking over programs at the current level. My question to our honourable Premier is: when can we expect the outstanding land claims negotiations to be completed? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Honourable Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have made a commitment to work to negotiate all outstanding land claims in the 18th Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That sounds great. It would be great if we could do that over the next couple of years here. That opens up a lot of our territory to development. But the biggest challenge is to ensure that we do this. I would like to ask the Premier: Will we be changing our negotiating mandate to ensure that we have a common interest to settle both land claims and self-government agreements?
In reviewing some of the reasons for why it has taken so long, and as the Member indicated, in some instances, it has been 20, 25 years of negotiations. We have met with the Aboriginal governments to try to determine the problems, the stumbling blocks that have stopped us from settling these claims a lot earlier than this. We’ve had very good discussions. I think part of it is the mandates that are in place that don't allow us any flexibility. As I have said before, we have met with the federal Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs and outlined how we saw us going forward. They are very open to it. The Prime Minister, during the federal election, wrote to us and indicated that their objective is to settle their outstanding land claims in a very facilitated manner. We have all agreed to work together. We have followed up with the federal Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs with a letter outlining how we see us moving forward and our officials will be getting together. Right now, we feel very positive about the possibilities.
My final question here. That really sounds great. In what sort of timeline can we actually see a change in the mandate? Is it six months or is it eight months or two months?
Just as an example, the Gwich'in rolling draft self-government agreement-in-principle is currently being negotiated by the Government of Northwest Territories, the Government of Canada, and the Gwich'in Tribal Council. The Gwich'in Tribal Council have expressed their desire to have the rolling draft completed by the end of March 2016. Both governments are committed to negotiating an agreement that meets everyone's interests as quickly as possible. However, there are several remaining outstanding issues to be resolved. We are going to work very hard to address these outstanding issues so that we could have an AIP in a very timely fashion.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
