Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement as well as many other Members who spoke today, we talked about the uncertainty and the communication plan of this government and how they are reaching out in explaining the AIP agreement to the everyday person throughout the Northwest Territories. My question will be to the Premier of our Territory. How is the Premier making sure that everyday Northerners are understanding truly what this agreement is about? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Now that we have a signed agreement-in-principle we will be able to reach out to all our households across the Northwest Territories. We are in the process of developing a householder that can go into the homes to give a plain language overview of the agreement-in-principle. As well, while that is being developed and hopefully once we have a draft copy, we can send it off. It will be a matter of weeks to get that out.
The other side of it is through the radio and using Aboriginal languages interpretation to reach out to our communities through the radio programs that are available to us and reach into the homes that way. We also prepared the media package as we did a technical review of that with the media part signing.
We are prepared to meet with the Aboriginal leadership. In fact, hopefully by later on today the letters will be going out to the regional leaders and the chiefs to see if they are interested in coming together in the first week of March to look at pulling all the people together again to go over the work and look at a way forward as we consider the work that needs to be done in the next phase. Thank you.
Clearly the communication factor seems to be a significant roadblock on this particular issue for people understanding what is happening about the AIP. I know people are trying to form opinions, but, unfortunately, there have been very few, and the few have been very loud, which have caused a galvanization, polar points of views. Mr. Speaker, I daresay the communication plan may be a bit late, so I am kind of worried on how long this particular issue will take. When can the Premier expect to be launching a campaign that reaches out to everyday Northerners to make sure that people know what is happening? Because it has already been at least one week since the agreement has been signed. They need to know. People need to know what it is about. Thank you.
Although the initial public release of the agreement-in-principle wasn’t done by the Government of the Northwest Territories, one of the big things we will do is table in this Assembly the signed agreement. We have begun the process of reaching out to the homes across the North. As well, we will be doing that through the radio programs. I talked about a householder being ready in a matter of weeks, hopefully before the end of this month. We can start the delivery of those to homes. Prior to that, I expect we will be able to deliver through the Aboriginal radio programs what the agreement-in-principle means as well. Not even following up on that, but right now we are reaching out to the regional leadership and the chiefs to see how they would come to the table and help us in preparing for the next phase. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, what is stopping the government today for reaching out to the local radio stations, whether it is CKLB, CBC or CJCD, in getting out there to get our message out there? Of course, like any campaign and any situation, it is about who gets their messages out first. Unfortunately, I have seen the naysayers campaigning out there loud and strong aggressively. I often wonder if these leaders are just spinning their points of view without giving people a chance to hear what the AIP is from the point of the view of the government. What is stopping the government from doing this in the context of today so we can get radio ads out maybe by Friday, and to the newspapers? Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, we have done advertisements in the papers for Aboriginal languages. We need to have the document interpreted, the plain language document interpreted so we can get that message out there. That isn’t a simple task to be done and to make sure it is done accurately. We are in the process of doing that. We will get that out as soon as we are able. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Timing is important. Even the Regular Members put forward a non-biased, plain language document. I can tell you that people scooped it up like crazy, wanting to find out just the average details of what is actually going on and how it is affected. We can do this in a matter of days with our fine staff here. I am just kind of concerned that the messaging from the Premier’s office and Cabinet is dragging on this particular initiative on such an important issue. Can the Minister use what we have provided as an Assembly, Regular Members, to get that message out there to make sure that people know exactly the detail? Yes, some ads have been out there, but I don’t think they are filling the average everyday person up with the details that they need. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I must say the Member is correct; the Regular Members have put together a brief paper on the devolution agreement. I believe it is very brief. To do this document justice, we are going to have to go into much more of it. I have already done a number of interviews with CBC, the call-in show, to try to address some of the specific concerns that are coming out there. But to do this justice, to get the accurate information in front of the people in the North in their own language as well as in English, we want to make sure we have done this right, and the interpretation right as well. We are going to be doing that in reaching out. In fact, I think the very one of our early stages here is by tabling the signed agreement-in-principle, and we can refer to the very specific sections now as we go forward. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
