Thank you, Mr. Chair. The government has been operating on an as and when basis with regards to committees. We do have interactions with the city at different departmental levels. Yellowknife MLAs meet regularly with city council before session.

I think it’s come to a point where a more significant interaction is required. Just recently, we had received a letter from the mayor and council outlining a whole host of areas in which the city is operating where it appears to be territorial issues as the Member indicates. We’re very prepared to sit down with the city as a Cabinet and the appropriate Ministers because we take responsibility for those areas that are the responsibility of the Government of the Northwest Territories. We don’t shirk our responsibilities, so we would be prepared to meet with them. If we can set up a process to work together, to improve and make most of these difficult issues to improve, we would be quite prepared to do that. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions to the Premier. Next on my list, I have Member Nakimayak.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I’d like to commend the Premier on his earlier comment about leaving a legacy. Coming from an Indigenous background, I know that for Inuit and for other Indigenous groups remain who we are, we must continue to harvest and co-manage our lands and resources whether it would be living resources or mineral resources of any type. I think all of our actions then and even now and moving forward are very important to the people in the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Chair, there are seven regional Indigenous governments in the Northwest Territories that have their own rights, responsibilities, and priorities in addition to the Government of the Northwest Territories. Since the devolution of lands and resources in 2014, some of those roles and responsibilities have changed. The GNWT has now a bigger role to play in managing lands and resources in the Northwest Territories. At the same time, settled land claims mean that Indigenous governments like the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation are major land owners in the territory and have their own authority to decide how their lands in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region are managed and developed.

Mr. Chair, I’d like to ask the Premier to talk about how this government works in partnership with Indigenous governments to benefit all residents of the Northwest Territories while respecting the rights and wishes of Indigenous people and governments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. The Honourable Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We operate with Aboriginal governments in a number of areas. As predicated on the respect, recognition, and responsibility policy that we’ve developed for our dealings with Aboriginal governments, we have signed intergovernmental MOUs with almost all of the Aboriginal governments where it’s a formalized process where we agree to meet on a regular basis to discuss areas of most importance to Aboriginal governments.

We also have established an intergovernmental council where we meet with the Aboriginal governments that own land, major land holders in the Northwest Territories where we have agreed to manage the lands in the Northwest Territories for which each government has responsibilities on a collaborative basis. It’s a process that started with the advent of devolution. Our government has been the chair. We have a process where we work together and we’re looking at moving the chairmanship around among the different participating governments. I think that it’ll provide some consistency and some collaboration and understanding of what everyone’s doing in the areas of land management. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions to the Premier. Next on my list, I have Member Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’ve just experienced a very beautiful summer and time has passed and fall is here. Naturally, change is inevitable. My question is to the Premier. What advice can he give to new members of the executive council? Mahsi.

The Honourable Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That’s a very interesting question. I think we had several new members of executive council. I guess the most important one is to read all your material, expect to work very long hours, and to put in the time to learn your portfolios. It is very important to establish networks and to surround yourself with the brightest, smartest people that you can find to help you achieve the objectives of the government in your areas of responsibility. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions to the Premier. Member Testart.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As honourable Members of this House know, I'm a big fan of process, of transparency, and of accountability. The Premier has had a very respectable career, and I applaud him for it. He's been here for three terms, two of those terms as Premier and all of them on Cabinet, as he said earlier.

After all of that experience, especially working very closely within the machinery of government, I'd like to echo a question my colleague Mr. Vanthuyne asked of the Cabinet, which is: what challenges exist within consensus, and how can we improve it? I know we've done a lot of work in this Assembly, but from the Premier's own perspective: what works best, what doesn't work, and how can we fix it? In particular, I'd also like to ask my question of: would he commit to having an open Territorial Leadership Committee vote rather than a secret ballot vote? It seems to be the direction this Cabinet is taking on leadership matters. Thank you.

Masi. The Honourable Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the most part with consensus government, I think we're able to achieve some significant objectives. My colleague in Yukon wonders how we can get anything done, especially when he looks at our budget process. They have a majority government. They do up their budget, they slap it down on the table when session starts, and 28 days later, whatever the level of debate is, they pass the budget. He said he can only remember one instance where there was one change made in the budget, as opposed to our process, where there are significant fingerprints on the budget. I think that some areas that we're constantly working to improve on are communication and working with committees on decision-making, and I think that we need to continue to work in that regard.

With regards to the TLC and the vote, I think that's a discussion that should be had. I think if you're looking at that, you might as well throw out whether we should move to a party system or not as well. We might as well look at all of those issues. I think of the Boundaries Commission. I'm not sure when that - I think it's every second government. For all of those things, if that's what the Members want, then we can have that discussion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Merci, Monsieur le President. During questions back on December 15, 2015, the Premier promised to "have a discussion and a public forum like this on how we would address our fiscal situation." I'm not aware of any such public forum that was held on Cabinet's fiscal strategy of $150 million in reductions and layoffs. In fact, our first two budgets created huge divisions between Regular MLAs and Cabinet and took an extraordinary amount of time to resolve. My friend on the other side, Minister Abernethy, actually raised this himself today. In my view, the time spent on the budgets could and should have been spent working on important mandate matters. How will the Premier handle the remaining two budgets with regard to public engagement and working with Regular MLAs? Mahsi, Mr. Chair.

Masi. The Honourable Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. If I recall, both of the budgets in the past two years have been approved by this Assembly, and so we have a process that I think has been working. Business plans will be reviewed with the Members. The Minister of Finance has indicated that we have a consultation process, and we'll be looking at doing something more in depth before the last budget of this government.

We can certainly have a discussion with the Members with regards to where they want to go with this. There are some substantial new initiatives that are coming forward. A lot of it is outside of our control, but we're always ready to have a discussion on these kinds of issues. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions to the Premier. Member Vanthuyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to just step back again and go back to some question around consensus government. We've asked a few different forms of questions along these lines today. I think that's reflective of how important our form of government is.

One of the questions that was not asked, however, and it continually gets asked during the election times leading up to elections is that our Premier is not publically elected. I want to ask the Premier today what his thoughts are on potential for publically electing a Premier. We're one of the, I think, only two jurisdictions in the country that doesn't allow the public to elect our Premier. Does he believe that that's something that we should consider, and if so, how would we go forward in doing that? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. The Honourable Premier.

Thank you. I've thought about this periodically. We could do it like you elect the President of the United States, for example, where you would have an electoral college, I think, where those running for Premier would have to campaign on a territorial basis, which would be significantly more expensive.

When you look at it, let's compare ourselves to the provinces, for example. When a Premier is elected, they're usually the leader of a party. You look at Alberta, for example. They had the NDP government and Social Credit. I think they have UCF now. With somebody runs for the leadership of a party, it's not representative of the whole province. It's just selected by the members of, if I can single out a party, the NDP or the Liberals. They select a leader, and then they go to an election. If they get 30 per cent of the vote or 50 per cent of the vote, and they get enough voters to elect them, then they become the governing party.

I don't know if that's any better of a system in terms of representation, whereas here, we represent all of the population of the Northwest Territories. This way, when the Caucus selects a Premier, I think it's a fair and representative way to do so. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Masi. Questions to the Premier. Are there any more questions? I see none at this point. I believe we have concluded with Members' questions to the Premier. We will now proceed to item 8, balloting. At this time, Members are asked to proceed to the Clerk's table to receive their ballot. Please proceed to the voting booth to mark your ballot, and then place them in a ballot box located in front of the Clerk's table or in the back. Mr. Sebert.

The vote is just by a simple "X"; is that correct?

That's correct. Members, any other questions on the balloting? If not, the Members can proceed with their voting.

---Balloting