In the next few weeks there will be a proposal brought forward for review. It is being worked on right now in Finance. We are very serious about this. There are clearly things we have to consider about such a fund, and we have to be prepared not only to establish it but to look at how we want to have some initial seed capital put in it at a time when we are struggling to make ends meet, as it were. But within the next few weeks there will be a document brought forward from Cabinet to committee so we can talk about the type of fund to set up, whether it should be in legislation and what the particulars of that type of legislation should be.

There we are talking about it again. I really want to get this fund established. I’m wondering if the government is investigating, for example, Norway’s special tax that ensures that excess profits from resource development companies go to the government for the benefit of the people or the production tax that’s used by the state of Alaska. What are we doing on the ground?

We are going to pull together a considered paper that’s going to be shared with the Regular Members, having heard very clearly once again in the House the need to communicate and consult before significant decisions are made. That work is underway, and we will be moving forward on that in the next number of weeks.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to the Minister for those comments. It’s nice to hear that something is happening — still not sure what. We’re going to hear something in the next few weeks. What exactly are we going to hear in the next few weeks? And what will be the schedule for putting that in place, getting it done?

I am particularly taken with work that was done in Norway, the fact that they set up a fund in legislation that’s politically tamper proof. It’s not tied to consolidated general revenue. The parameters of what can be done to it, how it can be done are very clear. The money is kept separate, and all the petroleum, oil and gas revenues go into that fund.

There are other ones to look at. Alaska and Alberta are two. The biggest one in the world is Abu Dhabi, which is almost $800 billion. The one in Norway is about $380 billion. So there are things we can learn. We want to set up the best one, tailored for the North, which, I would suggest, we would want to have set up in legislation so that, in fact, it is separate and politically tamper proof, but that is a discussion we have yet to have.

Thank you, Minister Miltenberger. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Hon. Premier, Mr. Roland.

Mr. Speaker, when I first announced that we’d be prepared to put devolution resource revenue sharing on the back burner, I got some negative feedback on that process. We had ongoing discussions with regional aboriginal leadership and in fact looked at the opportunities when we had meetings with the Prime Minister. I’ve had meetings with the Prime Minister to talk about

looking at other options, because the option that was on the table, which Members are fully aware of, was not something we would consider to be adequate here in the Northwest Territories.

Also, Members know that I’ve talked to him a number of times, trying to get a deal with the federal government on, for example, the Mackenzie Valley Highway. So putting those together, looking at an infrastructure plan, it’s a framework that’s been put out there, floated out there, and we’re working on trying to keep that door open. Of course, no discussions are happening at this time until we know what the results of the federal election will be.

I’ve informed Members, through communication of letters, to let them know of the proposal and the meeting with the Prime Minister. Hopefully, we’ll be able to give more detail as we see the results of the election and find out just where this will go.

Yes, I remember when it was suggested that devolution and resource revenue sharing were off the agenda. We all were obviously concerned, and we pushed for him to get it on, and it’s on. That’s good; that’s fantastic. What I’m talking about is a proposal that has now gone forward to the feds. We don’t know anything about it. We don’t know the details. We didn’t find out until September 29, which was 38 days after you made the proposal to the federal government.

I’m still curious, and this is going to go back to my first question. Why wasn’t this information on the specifics of this proposal shared with us prior to making that proposal to the federal government?

Just earlier in the Member’s statement I was told to put the sails up and get moving, and now I’m being told to put the sails down and park it until I get word by word discussion with my colleagues.

Yes, we should have gotten the information to you sooner. In this case, because of the time frame, trying to get all the pieces together in a sense of regional leadership, getting that piece, having the Prime Minister come up to the Northwest Territories and trying to fit it in the schedule, I didn’t have an opportunity to share that with Members. I guess I’ll have to wear that one, as well, on the process that we’ve been involved with.

The Member himself has said this may be the right process, the right thing and what we need in the Northwest Territories, but the process is bad, so maybe we should just stop and not move forward on this. So I’ve got clear signals from Members of the Assembly. We’ve got residents out there saying it should move ahead. We’ve got a need for more revenue on the table, and I’m trying to build a bridge to get to that location.

I’m hardly suggesting it’s time to take down the sails. I share my other colleagues’ advice: it’s time to get the sails up, and it’s time for us to move forward. What I’m simply suggesting is that when it comes to something as important as resource revenue sharing and devolution, it’s important to keep us all on the same page, which I don’t feel actually occurred in this case. I mean, I would like to know the details.

I guess the second question, since I really didn’t get the first question answered, is: when are we going to get the full description of what this proposal entails and what the benefits and the negative aspects of the deal are for us in the Northwest Territories?

Mr. Speaker, as I’ve written to Members and told them, this is a framework. There is not much more detail than what I’ve already given Members on the framework. It is an avenue to open the door for further discussion with the federal government. It includes a partnership among the federal government, the Government of the Northwest Territories and the private sector. I’ve given that to Members. We’ve been working on trying to schedule a meeting with Members. I’m open to when the Members confirm a meeting date. I believe we do have some time set aside here in the very near future.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m happy to hear that. Given that we’re all supposed to be equal partners in working towards the best interests of the people of the Northwest Territories, I’d like the Premier to commit to working with the Members on this side of the House and providing us with timely, upfront information in the future when it comes to items such as resource revenue sharing and devolution, as well as any other big picture items that the government might be proceeding with in the future.

Mr. Speaker, Members make a point of how I haven’t communicated with Regular Members on quite a regular basis, and a number of examples were given. But we have listened to Members. We’ve approached Members with some solutions to some of the concerns that were raised. We’ll continue to do that — to work with Members to try to come up with the options.

But, Mr. Speaker, one of the things I need to do before going to Members is to see if there’s even any appetite from the federal government, in this case, for a solution. Otherwise, I’d be wasting Members’ time by coming and saying: here’s an idea; what do you think? And then I’d have the federal government say no to it. Right now the door

has been opened, and we can have further discussion on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to continue on with the line of questioning that my colleague Mr. Abernethy had. It gets back to the cost shared infrastructure proposal that the government put on the table.

Going back to what the Premier mentioned on Friday, I can understand that they have to get on with things. They have to do things. Move and move quickly, I think were the words the Premier used. Again, I understand that. But you don’t develop a substantive proposal, a framework as he calls it, overnight.

I’d like to ask the Premier: who put the proposal together?

I hope I get most of the response here right, as I didn’t quite hear the last part of the question. But I’ll try and respond to what I did hear.

The work that’s been ongoing originally started with an opportunity to sit down with the Prime Minister. I had about 20 minutes with him to give him the idea that we needed to look at other options, to put on record with the Prime Minister that the deal that was put forward by Finance Canada during the last government and that seems to carry on through this government wasn’t satisfactory, that we were not prepared to go there, but there are other options that we could work on. At that point we felt there was enough uptake on the idea that there may be some other options, and we started putting some ideas together.

One of the other things that I spoke regularly about during my time as Premier for the Northwest Territories was about the Mackenzie Valley Highway. So I’ve put those two together as a possible option.

The best I can cobble together from the correspondence that was provided to Members and the timeline…. I think this framework was presented to the Prime Minister in Inuvik. That would have happened at the same time the Members of this Legislature were at the Gwich’in health and wellness camp just outside of Inuvik.

The question that I have: if the Premier, as the leader of our government, is going to make a substantive offer or a proposal to the Prime Minister

while he’s in our backyard, why wouldn’t he at least tell us that he was doing that, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the meeting’s happening and the time frame we did…. Again, I go back to the fact that I needed to have an idea that the federal government would take this up and carry it forward and on that basis feel comfortable that we could proceed.

Notification that the Prime Minister was travelling up was rather short, and as Members were aware, trying to get some time set aside to actually have a one on one about the Northwest Territories with the Prime Minister was quite difficult. That doesn’t give any excuse to the fact that we were there. And, yes, at caucus I probably should have put that on the table and shared that letter with them before it went to him.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Premier for that. I do believe that at the very least he had an obligation to tell the Members who were in Inuvik at the time that this was taking place. That didn’t happen, and that’s unfortunate.

From the time the proposal was made until Members were notified was, I think, 38 days. Again, I don’t understand why, if we’re making a substantive proposal like that, it would take 38 days to let Members know.

In his comments to me on Friday the Premier also stated that he was looking forward to getting together with the committee to go over some of this. Are we going to get the framework in its entirety or just what the government wants us to see, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, the letter I sent to Members has what we have on the table. We can share all the information about how we came up with this number in the hope of having something further. I would rather do it that way than try to get into a process here and have the federal government decide: well, they’re discussing it there, and there’s no real commitment and no use having any further discussion. I’m ready to share all the information we have, and I believe we have given that to the Members. But we can go through it in more detail or have more questions at that point as well as to what we’ve put on the table and what we hope to achieve.