Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A couple of things, as this motion is laid out, and as a couple of Members have spoken…. We’ve heard a number of times in this House and through this process in Committee of the Whole with different departments of the need for involvement and decision making as a government in planning and looking at options or offering opportunity for that — as this motion puts out, looking for meaningful involvement and participation at the strategic initiatives committees.
First of all, let’s look at consensus government. The fact is that we as Members of the Assembly and I at one time as a Regular Member had a level of input that no other jurisdiction has had at budget development, at new initiatives or even forced growth areas, in that definition.
That continues today. We have to recognize we have a greater involvement than any other jurisdiction when it comes to budget development or legislative development, legislative proposals and that scenario. We recognize that and we will continue to do that. Hopefully, we’ve got some time soon with Members to go over the strategic document itself that we’ve prepared as a result of our work together on the core vision and goals of the Legislative Assembly.
In fact, we have decided we’ll go forward with a couple of committees and have had some discussion in this Assembly. For example, the climate change one, we have just signed off a letter to go to committee to look at draft terms of reference for a joint committee on that work. As well, the Member for Tu Nedhe has raised issues of service delivery in our communities. So we’re looking at coming up with and we should be very close to getting a package to Members on the sustainable communities initiative.
I will say we are willing to look at how we incorporate further work around our strategic initiatives committees. Like I said, hopefully, we’ve got some time coming up on this piece of work we have to do.
I think any time we do things of change, there's always an anomaly in every Assembly — the first budget of that year. We've made a number of steps here in becoming more involved and trying to change direction of this government. So that has caused, as well, some angst. I agree with Members on that change. We will have to continue to look at how we further refine the process.