You do not have unanimous consent. Item 19, consideration in committee of the whole of bills and other matters. Committee Report 2-13(7); Tabled Document 31-13(7); Bills 15, 19, 20, 23, 24 and 25.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to request a short break.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that we conclude the item that we were considering yesterday, the committee report, that we deal with that item first. Thank you.

Agreed.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, it is probably appropriate to make concluding statements on the report. If it is okay, I would like to make my concluding statements.

Agreed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Some time ago we began this process, which really started after voting on the Boundaries Commission's report that no new seats were added to Yellowknife. The Friends of Democracy went to court and got a ruling that no constituency could be more than 25 percent above the average population of the average constituency in the Northwest Territories. From that, Bill 15 arose, and we the Standing Committee on Government Operations had that bill for 120 days. We went to several communities and heard representations from aboriginal people as well as from non-aboriginal people. In the smaller communities the feeling was pretty well unanimous, I could say, that they are very, very afraid of what this bill will be doing. They asked us to put some controls, I suppose you could call it, into place and to put a new process into place so that a new way of governing the North could be put into place not for this election but for the following one. That was the birth of our recommendations.

We obviously took the Premier's statement from March 24 to heart, knowing full well that he would live by what he had indicated, that in his view, building understanding of the issues and reaching a political resolution is critical if we are to move beyond this issue as a unified new territory. We did try to find out what the people wanted, and today the Aboriginal Summit issued a press release which was tabled as Tabled Document 61-13(7). If I may, I will just read the contents. It reads:

Members of the NWT Aboriginal Summit are supporting the recommendations of the Legislative

Assembly's Government Operations Committee for changes to Bill 15. The GNWT has proposed

legislation to add five new seats to the Assembly for urban areas. These measures are the least the

Assembly can do for aboriginal people outside Yellowknife, says Gary Bohnet, the President of the Metis

Nation NWT and co-chair of the summit, after a noon hour conference call with summit members.

Bill Erasmus, National Chief of the Dene Nation and co-chair of the summit added, the committee Members

who sponsored this report did go out and listen to people. Their report should be taken seriously. We

must make it clear, though, that the Dene Nation Chiefs as well as summit members do not support

adding five seats. Our support for the measures proposed by the committee does not mean that we agree

with the intent of the bill. Measures proposed by the committee include a work plan with clear guidelines

for the negotiation of a political accord with aboriginal governments, a legal reference to the Supreme Court of Canada on the relationship of aboriginal rights and individuals democratic rights, a six Member

Cabinet with guaranteed regional representation, a Constitutional and Electoral Reform Commission,

and a sunset clause that would repeal the boundaries when the next Assembly dissolves.

Bohnet pointed out that some of the committee's recommendations cannot be considered in isolation

from others. There is no sense in having a sunset clause if there is not any provision for a Constitutiona

and Electoral Reform Commission to work out new relationships and a new plan for electoral boundaries,

he said. The Northwest Territories Cabinet has already rejected some of the proposed measures,

including the legal reference and the introduction of legislation to establish a Constitutional and Electoral

Reform Commission.

The Cabinet has suggested they will negotiate a political accord and deal with

constitutional development through a proposed intergovernmental forum process. The mandate and

structure of the intergovernmental forum process has not been defined. The role in this process of

regional and tribal aboriginal governments, the Inuvialuit, and the Metis is not clear. It is not even

clear the process will get off the ground. Therefore, we strongly support an independent constitutional

commission established in law and reporting to both Legislative Assembly and the aboriginal leadership,

Bohnet said. Mr. Chairman, that was a press release that was released by the Western NWT Aboriginal

Summit earlier today. With that, I am hoping that the Cabinet will reconsider their stance earlier that

they would not agree totally with our recommendations. With the voice of the Aboriginal Summit that

they do agree to this type of a process, hopefully the Cabinet would reconsider and indicate that they

would reconsider.

Mr. Chairman, this has been a long process. I would have rather preferred to stay in Yellowknife and to be with my family and to spend more time with my family, even when we were in Yellowknife, during this long process as, I am sure, the rest of our committee Members that did work on this and the staff that also did the work. I would like to thank everybody that worked on the report and thank the people who came forward and made presentations. Hopefully the Cabinet will reconsider their stance in light of the press release from the Aboriginal Summit. With that, I would like to thank you for allowing me to make my closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to thank the people of the western Northwest Territories for their input into the public review of Bill 15 that the Standing Committee on Government Operations undertook. The recommendations of our committee should be given due consideration. The recommendations are, through our committee, from the people of the Northwest Territories. At this time in our history we have a very fragile political working relationship with all parties in the Northwest Territories. We should be looking very seriously at ways of the new western territory moving ahead and doing that in unity. I know the next item on this agenda is the government's introduction of their Bill 15. I know that the government has listened to what we have had to say. I know that our government has an opportunity, through the introduction of their bill, to consider some of the recommendations that we put forward as a committee. So I look forward to hearing what they have to say. With that, I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Agreed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, Bill 15 is intended to meet the requirements set down by the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories with respect to electoral districts in the Northwest Territories.

The main purpose of the bill is to revise the electoral districts of Hay River, Inuvik and Yellowknife to establish five additional electoral districts. The bill also revises the electoral district for Deh Cho to include the community of Enterprise.

In addition, this bill;

- eliminates ten current electoral districts that will be located in Nunavut on the establishment of that new territory;

- makes minor amendments to the descriptions of some of the other existing electoral districts by replacing references to the Nunavut Settlement Area Boundary with reference to the Nunavut - Northwest Territories Boundary; and

- provides that it will come into force on the first dissolution of the Legislative Assembly after April 1, 1999.

Yesterday, Mr. Chairman, we debated the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Government Operations based on their review of the bill.

Cabinet is very concerned about the comments of several honourable Members during our discussion in committee of the whole yesterday. In particular, we are concerned about the comments made by some that we have rejected the committee's recommendations on this bill. Cabinet has not, I repeat, has not rejected any of the recommendations.

In fact, Mr. Chairman, Cabinet agreed in principle with all of the recommendations of the committee with the exception of establishing a limit of six Members on Cabinet. We also asked for more time to review the issue of whether to pursue a legal reference as this is a complex legal issue and we need time to do a careful review.

Our objective in making our comments yesterday, which I thought I explained adequately in my opening, was to provide our initial position to the recommendations based on a 24-hour review, since we received the report.

It is important to note that Members of the committee have undertaken their work for the past several months and have had and opportunity to fully consider these issues and discuss the implications. We expect the same courtesy, Mr. Chairman.

Members will note that most of our comments yesterday concerned the process for implementing the recommendations. Now that the recommendations of the committee have been formal motions of the House, we intend to give them full consideration. We will report back to the Members of this House as soon as possible. Equally important, we intend to consult with the appropriate stakeholders to determine the support for each recommendation.

For example, on the issue of the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Commission, we indicated that we were in full support of the intent of this recommendation. In fact, we intend to immediately consult with aboriginal leaders and other stakeholders to consider their views on the recommendations and to determine how best to proceed.

Mr. Chairman, several Members seemed to take the issue with the government pursuing an intergovernmental forum. It is somewhat confusing that this concept would be criticized given that it is intended to bring together people, aboriginal and public governments, to discuss on an ongoing basis, our intergovernmental relationship here in the North. This, in our view, seemed to be the intent of the committee's recommendation on negotiations of a political accord. With that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to address Bill 15. Thank you.