Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to add my Member’s statement today to talk about the potential benefits to the Sahtu region of the Northwest Territories. I want to say, first of all, congratulations to the GNWT and their negotiating team for working with the people in the Sahtu and allowing them flexibility, and more importantly, for the Sahtu people to come to a decision to sit at the negotiating table on devolution. This gives them some flexibility to come, as I said in my press release, to negotiate our own faith within the Sahtu and the Northwest Territories.
This is not a done deal yet; however, we can see the benefits of us coming to the table and to take ownership of our own destiny. I wanted to say this first of all in my Member’s statement: Congratulations to the leadership and the people in the Sahtu.
I also want to say that as part of this process, and my colleague the honourable Member for Hay River Mrs. Groenewegen talked about, was the issue of decentralization and putting the decentralization process to work. We want to see results where programs, services and, more importantly, the positions are going to go into the regions and not automatically assume that the city of Yellowknife and the buildings here are going to have them. The bureaucracy needs to know that they need to put these positions in the regions and not make it easier for us as government to say it has to go to Yellowknife because it makes more sense. It makes more sense to see the services go to the regions. That’s what I’m going to be harping on this government, to hold them accountable and see if your words are real true to us and put these positions in the regions where they make more sense to my people. We’ll wait and see that approach for me.
I do want to say that’s my forewarning to the Cabinet members; that I will be here, as any other Members, to hold them accountable and transfer them and make sure that government does what is says it’s going to do.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
