Thank you, Mr. Chair. And as I've stated a number of times, working with Indigenous governments to advance the needs of the entire territory is the cornerstone of my approach to -- would be my approach to Premier. We do need to work together. You know, we have issues across the territory. The best to address those issues is to work with the Indigenous governments in their regions. We can't dictate what's going to happen across the territory from here in Yellowknife. We need to work with the regions. We need to work on advancing and settling and implementing land and self-governments and that will build the capacity in the regions. That will bring the power and the money into the regions. I've spoken about the infrastructure we need to ensure that we can go to Ottawa with Indigenous governments, whether it is as an entire territory through the Council of Leaders, one on one with an Indigenous government who may have more capacity and desire to advance a certain project, or with regional Indigenous governments. So there's a lot of opportunities. We need to be flexible. And we cannot dictate how we are going to work with Indigenous governments. We need to work with Indigenous governments and co-develop our approach and utilize what we have in the GNWT to everyone's benefit. And so when I talk about infrastructure and Ottawa, I mean offices in Ottawa where we are in constant contact with the key players at the bureaucratic level. And that involves the GNWT and Indigenous governments. And so then we can go shoulder to shoulder to Ottawa. We can speak to Ministers. And they're not just going to say, you know, that was a great conversation and then call it a day. They always go back to their officials and they say tell me more about this project or these governments. And if that official has been briefed up, they know what's going on in the regions, they've been prepped by our people, that's when things start to move. And so, you know, we can talk about doing it, but we actually -- there's mechanisms we can put in place, and I commit to putting those in place, to make sure that we actually advance them.
R.J. Simpson on Questions by Members
On December 7th, 2023. See this statement in context.
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