Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Premier and have to do with our dealings with Ottawa. In the past we as an Assembly have gone en masse to Ottawa. We called it NWT Day. We broke into small groups and visited with Ministers. We went to Parliament Hill. We had a reception there. Everybody in Ottawa who met us thought we were really cool, but I don’t think we came home with much. I’d like to ask the Minister, in view of all of our government’s negotiations with Ottawa, when are we going to re-staff the Ottawa office to coordinate our efforts for the best results when we do make trips to Ottawa.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very pleased to advise the Member that we have booked conference rooms or a ballroom in the Chateau Laurier and we will be holding NWT Days at the same time that the Winterlude is happening in Ottawa. We are doing business plans for 2013-2014 at which time, with the support of the Members, we’ll be asking for funding to upgrade our Ottawa office.
I noticed in some of the Ministers’ statements today they talked about working with Health Canada on various projects. I think that a strong presence by a hired person in the Ottawa office in the past has been a great asset to our government in setting up meetings and keeping their ear to the ground on what’s happening there, feeding information back to us, facilitating our efforts in Ottawa. I’d like to ask the Premier, is there a plan at this time to consider staffing that office again with that kind of a person.
At this time we do have a person in the Ottawa office. We are looking at increasing our presence in Ottawa and we’ll be looking for support to get additional resources to a higher level position.
So the Premier refers to NWT Days in the Chateau Laurier and the Winterlude and so on and so forth. Can I ask who’s going to Ottawa? Are we all going to Ottawa? Maybe I wasn’t aware of that.
We have had input from the standing committee and they have advised that they want to see the number of MLAs attending be staggered over a four-year period and we will be organizing it accordingly.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m very glad to hear that. I would like to see small groups of MLAs go to Ottawa with a very specific task and an ask, and to come home with a report on the results that they achieve while they’re there, as opposed to us all going down there at one time for just kind of a feel-good time. That’s very good news. I appreciate the Premier’s respect for the input of the standing committee and we’ll look forward to the schedule of what we’ll be going there for and what we’ll be asking for.
That was our intended approach.
I might add that I was invited to attend a Northern Lights Conference in Ottawa where it was organized by Nunavut, Labrador and Nunavik. The reception they had was very well attended by federal Ministers. There were about 20 federal Ministers in addition to the wife of the Prime Minister. We’re hoping to have the same kind of attendance from federal Ministers when we organize our NWT Day.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
