Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Premier with some questions related to my Member’s statement. I know the AIP agreement on devolution, there are some firm agreements in place, but I think without getting on board, there is still some distrust by Aboriginal organizations. They do want to review it but they cannot get access to the resources to assist them unless they actually sign on board. Has the Premier or Cabinet discussed this and what is the best way to address their concerns?
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The issue of the agreement-in-principle and trying to get the information out on top of the years of discussions around the negotiation of the agreement-in-principle piece we’ve looked at and sent letters out to the regional leadership and invited them to contact us to go over the agreement-in-principle and the issues they may have out of that and look at sharing in the funding of those meetings.
The Premier can correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought funding and resources available for discussions with devolution was tied to actually signing on board with the GNWT with regard to the agreement-in-principle.
There are two pots of funding that start to flow upon signing of the agreement-in-principle. That is tied specifically to some of the work that would be prepared as groups prepare for negotiations, mandates and so on, to do the background work. The work we’re talking about doing is looking at the agreement-in-principle itself, to give the leadership and community members a better idea of just what the agreement-in-principle is. Of course, to share in the funding that’s available to Aboriginal groups, they need to sign on and that would allow the federal government to sit with them to then begin flowing those dollars.
I think the Aboriginal groups are looking at what they want is the resources to have a real good look at the agreement-in-principle to see if it’s something that’s consistent with their priorities and principles, yet they have to sign on board to access those resources. Has the Premier given any thought of any other way of assisting our Aboriginal governments to review the agreement-in-principle other than by signing on board?
Well, how to put this in a way that is respectful of all the processes that we’ve been a part of since 2001 when the discussion of devolution began to take hold through the Intergovernmental Forum. Through that time since 2002 from a framework to where we are today between the federal government and ourselves, we’ve put almost, I think, I’ll have to get the accurate figure but I know we’ve put, between the federal government and ourselves, almost $8 million on the table to work with the groups around the agreement-in-principle. I’ll get the accurate information from a GNWT perspective.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I know that myself as MLA and Regular Members on this side want a strong North for all Northerners and I think one of the best ways we can do it is to try to be flexible, go to our Aboriginal organizations, provide some resources without actually having them sign on board, so that they can have an independent look at the AIP to address all of the concerns that they’ve been saying for the past month.
The process both from the federal government and ourselves has been one to help the organizations and governments to the best way possible so that they can be involved in this and help frame up that agreement-in-principle. Our share of the Government of the Northwest Territories contribution has been $3.9 million since 2001 to this year. The Government of the Northwest Territories Executive department actually reduced our budget to go through our cost-savings exercise over the last couple of years and reduced the funding and the devolution portfolio. For example, what we’re doing right now is trying to come up with some funds to help with the regions and looking at the AIP so that they can feel comfortable with the information we’ve been presenting.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
