Mr. Chair, some of it has been used in the past for the Aboriginal Summit salaries. Now, Mr. Chair, what I just mentioned just a minute ago is what I want to do. I want to allocate all of the money that we have for grants and contributions to aboriginal organizations to the aboriginal organizations and let them determine how they are going to participate in the various forums. One of the problems we have had in the past is that we funded the Aboriginal Summit directly ourselves. The result of doing that was that the leaders became less and less close to that summit because they weren't involved in making the decisions about how it was funded and so on. We did that for them. Mr. Chair, what I want to do is get the money to the aboriginal organizations at the regional level and let them be governments. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister Handley. Mr. Braden.

Mr. Chair, this particular item here -- and we are still talking about $490,000 for Intergovernmental Forum participation -- it indicates that participation costs are cost shared between us and DIAND on a one-third/two-third basis. The Premier did mention that he wants to check with the new DIAND Minister Prentice. So depending on whether or not DIAND comes on board, is this money still going to be allocated to aboriginal organizations regardless of whether or not DIAND partners on this, Mr. Chair?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Minister Handley.

Mr. Chair, it is my intention to pay the money to the regional aboriginal organizations in any case. I would like to have the federal government approach it the same way we do and let the regional organizations determine themselves the extent to which they participate in the summit; or if they want to have some other kind of forum, let them choose their own organization rather than us dictating it to them. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Minister Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I support that approach to this allocation fully. But I want to probe just what are the terms or the criteria under which we're giving this money, and I guess I'd ask an additional question to it then. If we're going to allocate this to the aboriginal organizations, what criteria or expectations are we going to attach to it, Mr. Chairman, if the terms are going to be changing? What are we going to say our expectations are, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We're currently working on refining the terms as we speak. Generally, what we're expecting here is that the aboriginal organizations will use this money to be able to participate in any intergovernmental meetings, forums, and so on that we have. They may use some of this money for their travel costs. They may use some of it to hire research staff. But we want them to be prepared to come to the table and be able to meet us on as much an equal government-to-government-to-government relationship with ourselves and the federal government. Without this kind of money, then they are clearly at a disadvantage. So, Mr. Chairman, we allocate it to the regions, we give them maximum flexibility to use it for this general purpose, use it in a way that they feel is going to help them to present their case. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Anything further, Mr. Braden?

Mr. Chairman, there's also, on this page, an allocation for $240,000, a continuation from last year for the same amount, for the NWT Economic Development Advisory Forum. This one has kind of a similar link to the item we previously talked about in that it says here an equal amount will be distributed by the federal government. Okay, the NWT Economic Development Advisory Forum. So can we also anticipate, are we going to go ahead with this allocation regardless of whether or not the new federal government is on side, Mr. Chairman?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Economic Development Advisory Forum was created a number of years ago as part of the Aboriginal Summit. It never did really get off the ground in playing a significant role in providing advice on economic development regionally. So it put together some recommendations, it met occasionally, and so on. As with the $490,000, it is my intention to use the $240,000 as a grant to the aboriginal organizations at the regional level, let them use that for capacity, for the support that they need. Mr. Chairman, I might say that, as well, of the regional reorganization and capacity building funds, there is 100,000 in there that I intend to allocate to the regional organizations, as well. So, Mr. Chairman, the net result will be $830,000 that will be distributed to the aboriginal organizations at the regional level for them to be able to participate, as I said before, on a government-to-government relationship with us. We're not going to tell them how to spend it except that it has to be spent generally within this purpose; but how much to spend on travel, how much to spend on researchers or renting an office or something, that's going to be their decision. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Next I've got Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Intergovernmental Forum participation, I would like to understand. When Mr. Minister is talking about allocating funds to the regional government that presumption is that it's going to cut out the Aboriginal Summit, Mr. Minister, in terms of...I guess I'm trying to get the grasp how, yes, you all have your visual governments there allocating who or when or how much is going to help with this certain part of the forum here and it's just the Aboriginal Summit will just sort of go away or disappear. I'm not too sure what kind of relationship that will be with our territorial government. I just need some clarification; that's all, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, a couple of weeks ago, two or three weeks ago, I had a meeting with the aboriginal regional leadership. At that time, I talked to them about the summit and the issues around us funding their summit directly for them, and talked, as well, about who are the leaders, who's the leadership in the Territories. The agreement was that the leadership were those people who were elected at the regional level and they are the ones who are the leaders. The agreement at that meeting was that we would, instead of us funding the summit for them, we would give them the money. They would work out, along with us, how much goes to the Sahtu, how much goes to the Gwich'in area, how much to the Inuvialuit and so on. They would then have to collectively make their own decision about what the summit would look like and what their fee would be for belonging to the summit in order to pay its expenses.

Mr. Chairman, the summit is in some ways, I'd say, very similar to the Council of the Federation of the Premiers where we get together regularly, we decide what the fee is, and we choose to belong or not belong to it and it serves our purposes. So I see dealing with the summit in the same way. Whether the summit survives or whether it disappears is going to be a decision that is going to be made collectively by the aboriginal regional leadership. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Minister, for that explanation in terms of the rollout of this Intergovernmental Forum. Mr. Chairman, in terms of the 490, is this going to be allocated on a per capita basis or distributed equally amongst the regions? Do we have a list of legit governments that we're going to...Are we going to get into any quarrels in terms of who is a government, who is not a government, and what? So I guess those are more the administrative...I'd like to at least have some idea as to the funding of the allocation to participate at the Intergovernmental Forum. I think it's going to be a good, strong forum and you have some proper...I guess it's the communication and that's a lot of work that you're doing here, Mr. Minister, in terms of seeing where this goes. I think it will be a real asset for us in terms of our other negotiations with the federal government.

---Interjection

I'm looking at the good that's happening here. So I just want to make sure that we're doing it in a fair and equitable manner; that the funding gets allocated, or you might receive some phone calls next year. Not too sure. Sorry, Mr. Chairman.

Mahsi, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I hope that we don't distribute it on a per capita basis. I expect that we will put forward a base-plus funding arrangement, similar to what we did with the community infrastructure funding, so that every region that participates would have a fair allocation of money. It wouldn't be just straight per capita. That remains to be concluded, though. We want to work with the aboriginal organization to determine how to best do this. Mr. Chairman, the participants so far in the summit have been the Inuvialuit, the Gwich'in, the Sahtu, the Dehcho have had observer status and I'm not sure if that's going to change, same with the Akaitcho, the North Slave Metis participated, as did the NWT Metis. So, Mr. Chairman, it pretty much covered everybody. But, Mr. Chairman, if for some reason a particular claimant organization decided it didn't want to participate in a forum, but rather they were just going to go on their own and not participate on a territorial basis in some form of summit, then we would have to decide whether or not we were going to provide them with funding. But because the funding is to participate in a territorial organization, my leaning would be not to provide them funding unless they participated. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Yakeleya.