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.

Mr. Chairman, the committee's comments are already on record in their report, as well as the comments that I made yesterday in introducing the bill. Perhaps we could open it up for general comments from the Members? If I may, I would make a few general comments as a Member and not as a chair of the committee?

Yes, I would.

Agreed.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, to my right, we have Mr. Shawn Flynn. He is the legislative counsel. To my left, I have Mr. Rick Bargery. He is the principal secretary. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just for clarification, Mr. Premier, on your opening remarks, you had talked about now that the recommendations of the committee's report are formal motions in committee of the whole in the past that you will be immediately going out to the stakeholders to consult on moving ahead on the Constitutional Electoral Reform Commission, so that would start immediately? Will that start immediately? We do have a time frame that there is a session being scheduled for late September sometime. In order for this Assembly to deal with that, we would have to start immediately, consulting with the stakeholder groups.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we will immediately draft letters to aboriginal leaders, community leaders, and different organizations in the Northwest Territories with the content of Bill 15, as well as the recommendation of the committee which suggests that we introduce legislation on a number of key areas, and we intend to do that right away. I had already instructed my staff to begin drafting a comprehensive, informative letter to the appropriate leaders in the Northwest Territories, as well as myself, as well as other Members of Cabinet have been scheduled to continue to attend all the annual assemblies of the different organizations. In fact, I will be attending the Deh Cho First Nations Assembly in Kakisa here next week. Mr. Kakfwi is scheduled to attend the Dogrib Assembly here the following week, and there is a Sahtu Secretariat General Assembly. There is a Gwich'in Assembly still coming up, and the Metis Nation is having theirs in September. There is a series of different Assemblies that we are scheduled to attend. These are all the opportunities that we see right offhand to pursue a consultation with the aboriginal leaders and the different stakeholders. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When you are dealing with the Aboriginal Summit and the stakeholder groups, because of the time constraint, the government has to be fairly focused and the aboriginal governments have to be paying attention to this issue as well as being focused. Also, in order to get these people to all talk about a political solution, this being one of those, there would have to be proper resources put there to assist them to come to the table. Have you thought of that at all?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have just recently, in the last 48 hours, officially received the report, although we kind of knew what was in it prior to that. Being in the House and trying to deal with the concerns raised in the House, we have not really looked at that approach and whether

we are going to have some resources available. Perhaps it is something that we have to look at. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What the Premier is saying is that he is committed to working with the stakeholder groups to come through with a political solution in the life of this 13th Assembly. He will make all the necessary efforts to bring back legislation in the fall sitting.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, our intention is to consult with all the stakeholders and all the different leaders on the recommendations of the committee and want to know whether there is support for making a major initiative. For example, in the Constitutional Political Commission, which is a very major initiative that has been there for us to consider in developing legislation. That is the main one for me, to have a complete buy-in by all the different stakeholders. If that is the case, in the time that we have now, we have already tentatively agreed to have another session in September, I have asked our technical people whether it is technically possible to draft legislation of that magnitude in the time frame that we have. It is going to be very tight. If there is a complete buy-in by all the aboriginal groups and the different stakeholders, then we will attempt to begin legislation for the future, perhaps even in September. Thank you.

Just for clarification once again, Mr. Chairman. I know none of us can foretell the future, but indications are that people are looking for a political solution to Bill 15 and a companion document in order to ensure that there is a process in place to establish a new constitution for the western Arctic as well as electorial boundaries. In order to do that it means, just like we have said in our committee report, that the government has to consult, has to go and talk to the people, the stakeholders, to put this together to bring the legislation forward. I am hearing that the Premier, on behalf of his government, is totally committed to doing that, to putting that effort there. This is what I would like to know now. You know what the life of the 13th Assembly is. There is a date. What it is, I forget, but I do know that it is possible to have a Legislative Assembly sitting as late as late September, possibly early October. I am not quite sure of the dates. Are you willing to support a legislative sitting at the latest possible time in the life of this Assembly in order to get the consultation done and the legislation done, if possible?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we are going to put all the effort that we can into trying to consult with aboriginal groups. We want to have a really focused approach and try to see if there is a buy-in into the recommendations that the committee put forward. If there is buy-in, we will also attempt to try to develop legislation. We will consider that. In regard to timing of the fall sitting, we tentatively had agreed that there would be a session in the early part of September. That is certainly subject to change. We have already changed dates before, so I guess it is really the will of the caucus to determine when such a sitting is going to be. If it is later, we will have to revisit our original decision to consider that and perhaps to accommodate some of the work that may be deemed to be necessary at that time. If we need the time, then perhaps we should consider that as well. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. One of the recommendations the committee made on this bill is to pass legislation on the 2-2-2 make-up of the Executive Council. The government felt that would be better done through convention. When you are consulting with the stakeholders of the Northwest Territories - we have only heard the opinion of the general public at our public hearings that supported this - will you also consult on that issue of 2-2-2, whether it should be in legislation or it should be a convention of the House, and reconsider that as well?

We will do that. As I said, we will consider all the recommendations that are made by the committee for this Bill 15, including the 2-2-2. Thank you.

Thank you. How soon will the government be able to get back to the committee on an approximate time schedule to nail down how you are going to proceed on this issue from tomorrow until the end of the life of this Assembly?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We are getting into a really tight time crunch in regard to taking the recommendations and writing letters to people with requests that they respond by certain time frames. That is one approach that we initially thought of. As well, these Assemblies go on. In summertime it is very difficult to try to get to people because there are holidays in different Assemblies. We will attempt everything that we can to try to reach everybody, but it is going to be quite difficult to do because of the amount of time we have left to do this work and the time of the year. We will make all efforts to try to come back and keep the committee members as informed as possible. It is very difficult at this time to say that we are going to do this at this time and are going to respond. It is very difficult, but we will try to do it as timely and quickly as we can. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Will you commit to this Legislative Assembly that this is the highest priority for your government and the highest priority for yourself as Premier to try to work out a political solution and consult with those aboriginal groups and other stakeholders?

Mr. Chairman, if the last few days were any indication of what to expect to in September, I am certainly going to make it my first priority. Thank you.

When decisions are made and they are decisive, sometimes names change. Instead of lame duck, maybe it should be muddy duck once decisions are made. In all seriousness, Mr. Premier, this is a critical issue for the western Northwest Territories. I know how busy you and your Cabinet Members are, but at this time in our history we have to be focused. We have to move ahead and we have to give some assurances to our small communities prior to the next election. We have to do everything possible. That is why we are here. I do not speak for the Standing Committee on Government Operations, but if we can help in any way, we would be willing to do that to work on a political solution. I know you have a process in place right now where you do have our chairperson involved with yourself, your Minister of Finance, but if you need more help, then we would be willing to do that. It is something that has to be addressed.

Certainly, if I can get the direction from Cabinet, whenever we get back together here in the next few days and raise this issue and if ordinary Members are free for doing this work and they have some energy and are willing to help us out on this one here, then certainly we would welcome that and maybe make some arrangements on how we could work together on this whole initiative. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one last question on clarification. In order for any constitutional or electoral boundary commission to be established and in order for it to be of any substance, your government would have to adjourn the presentation of Bill 15 introducing an amendment to sunset this bill. Will you be doing that today? Thank you.

I think the honourable Member is asking about a technical move here in regard to Bill 15 and the amendment for a sunset clause. We thought that Members of the committee were going to do the amendment and we were going to support that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think it is up to this committee, but we have all that work done and we could share it with you to show how much we are willing to work with you and allow you, instead of ourselves taking all of the glory, we would allow the government or give the government the opportunity to introduce an amendment so that it shows the people in the Northwest Territories that we are fully committed to moving ahead and looking for a political solution and we are all working together.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We could do that. We will do that if Members of the committee wish us to.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As has been indicated, the smaller communities do need some form of reassurance that things are going to happen and in order for that reassurance we feel very strongly that things have to be in legislation before this Assembly dissolves and we all know that legislation takes time to be drafted and there are only certain people that can do drafting, but this government has used drafters from the south in the past and we have people in the past who used to work here that live in other jurisdictions and I know that this government still uses them. I would like to see if the Premier would be willing to use other drafters than our own staff if we have to in order to insure that this legislation is completed in time to be passed by this Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the honourable Member is correct that whenever there are really tight timelines or unusual types of legislation, the government has in the past contracted drafters to draft legislation and I am also told that normally the legislation of this nature would take something like four or five months, but we all know that we are in a time crunch, and we will consider contracting drafters for this situation and we will see what is available and we will consider that. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to thank the Premier for his forthright answers and reiterate that if there is any further assistance that the committee Members can provide then we would be happy to oblige, and I would like to thank the Premier for indicating that they will be consulting with the stakeholders to see if there is concurrence with our recommendations. That is the most we could ask for that the government see what the reaction is, because I do not think we would want to put something into place that nobody else agrees to it either. So, with that I would once again like to thank the Premier and his Cabinet for agreeing to do this.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Maybe we can have Mr. Miltenberger repeat his comments that he made on Bill 15.

Agreed.

Agreed.