Mr. Speaker, on the business of community transfer initiatives, a lot of internal work has been done to try to come to an agreement within the government of how we are going to make ourselves capable of efficiently responding to those communities that wish to engage in talks leading up to possible transfer agreements.
In previous Legislatures, there have been attempts by individual departments to transfer certain resources, programs, positions, etc., to a number of different communities across the Northwest Territories. One of the things that has been learned is that, unless the government takes a one-agency approach it is not possible to ensure any success in concluding any of the initiatives. There are initiatives presently, that are still outstanding from years ago.
For instance, in Tuktoyaktuk, there were discussions for years on the transfer of social services. I am not certain that it has been concluded with any decisiveness. There is not a sense that there is a clear, coordinated approach to monitoring and evaluating the success we have encountered there.
There is quite a bit of work required just to finish off those things that were started already and the Members will be able to leaf through the implementation plan for community transfer initiatives, which has taken us up until now to have finalized as an official government document.
It does not mean we had no idea of how to approach it but it does take the bureaucracy some time to come to an agreement in terms of the format and description of the process and the terminology used to develop an official document describing the implementation plan that would be acceptable across all agencies of government. I believe that will be tabled probably tomorrow.
In any case, the first part of the work has been to respond to those communities that have expressed an interest in getting into these talks and, so far, we have responded, in between sessions, and between Cabinet meetings to quite a number of communities. We have gone into all the Gwich'in communities of the Delta. We have offered to have meetings in Inuvik. We are invited to go back to Inuvik. We were invited to go to Sachs Harbour. We were trying to finalize a date there a date there. We have had discussions with all these communities and there are a number of documents and proposals that are currently being developed. Communities are indicating that following a general discussion on the approach that the government will take, the concept that we are bring to our work that companies are taking some time to decide, whether follow-up work shops are required, whether a specific amount of money, work and research papers are required. We have gone to Rankin and met with all the mayors of the Keewatin. These are now being followed up by individual communities, asking us to come into their communities to begin specific community by community discussions. I have gone to Cape Dorset to have the discussion with the community there and we are following-up and responding to them in regards to the proposal they have submitted. We have gone to Pond Inlet to speak to the hamlet there to offer first hand to the community on a discussion with them on how we are going to approach the work. We have had a meeting with justice committees in that community as well. We have done, I believe, as much work as we can. It is not clear to me that the entire Northwest Territories is interested at this time, but we have served notice at a number of sessions now that, for those M.L.A.s who believe that their communities are interested to bring them to our attention. We have had discussions with different aboriginal leaders, we have sought invitations and received invitations and in each case we have responded and have tried to establish contact and acceptable dates for meetings. So far there has been a good positive response to the approach that we have taken.
That is a summary of the work that we have done to date. It should be further noted that those political leaders who are presently mandated to discuss the political self-government rights of aboriginal people in the western Arctic. The Committee of Political Leaders have served notice that the first priority on their part is to make sure that this legislature recognizes community transfer talks as the first priority requiring resources when requested by communities. They have served notice on a number of occasions. The western M.L.A.s met last night with the group and that was one of the points that was made. Further that communities will require additional money aside from engaging specific community transfer talks, they will require research in some cases to look at the type of community government models that they might use to approach the territorial government in seeking responsibility, recognition of their right to take on additional responsibility and additional resources. Thank you.