Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a very good question and something that, upon our election and the start of this government, we had a lot of discussion around, about how we could best take advantage of the opportunity that is coming.
One of the first things that we did was to strike the joint committee of Cabinet and AOC members to advise our government on its role and its coordinated effort in terms of the Mackenzie gas project. We recognized that there were a number of departments who were all conducting individual activities. For instance, Municipal and Community Affairs working with communities to develop capacity, working with communities to better understand their infrastructure challenges and needs; RWED, of course, involved from both the environmental perspective, but also working with communities and would-be entrepreneurs to take advantage of opportunities coming their way; ECE involved from an employment and training perspective, and, of course, we know and we have had some discussion around the social envelope departments and their role in ensuring that where there are negative impacts that we do what we can to mitigate those.
This steering committee is advising our government on all issues related to the pipeline. We have created the Mackenzie Valley pipeline office, which we are in the process of staffing up to ensure a coordinated government effort. But I think the short answer to the question around legislative initiatives is no.
We see that the most effective approach we can take is to negotiate a socioeconomic agreement with the Producers' Group and make sure that all the various different line departments are plugged into our committee and ensure that we negotiate the best agreement that we can on behalf of the peoples of the Northwest Territories.
There are a number of other mechanisms available to us as well. We have registered and are in the process of sharing information with, proponents around the JRPEA, the Joint Review Panel Environmental Assessment, and the NEB process to come. Members can expect that we will advocate strongly for the interests of northerners in those processes. They are two separate processes. One is more of a technical nature, related to tolling and tariffs around the pipeline and how the pipeline will technically
be reviewed and should be best structured so that we cannot only develop the three anchor basins that we have all talked so much about, but we also want to ensure that we develop the entire basin going forward, because we think that a lot of the benefit to northerners will come from the exploration and activity that follows having the actual conduit in ground.
We have a number of different roles we are playing, and I would say that those are really the main tools that we have available to us in terms of ensuring that benefits stay in the North. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.