Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Our Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations, I just want to maybe address aboriginal affairs. I know that they continue to be involved in a lot of the negotiations and main-table discussions. I had a curious discussion...I know that the Minister and his staff came to Fort Simpson. I think it was in early January. I had a curious discussion with the leadership and they actually didn’t know the staff that was travelling with the Minister. It got me thinking that even though we’re at the main tables, the people that are involved there are familiar with the people involved in the negotiations. But my thoughts are about, well, just how much does our staff travel to the communities and engage the different chief and bands. I don’t know if it’s part of a strategy to go out and meet the leadership and be exposed at the different leadership meetings, and I don’t know if staff turnover has a role to play here, but I think what I’d like to see, Mr. Chair, is that the Department of Aboriginal Affairs is present, that they develop a repertoire, a working relationship with the different communities in different regions and different leadership so that they know who is travelling with the Premier if he travels again in his purview as the Minister of DAAIR.

I think that’s key because communications are always important in developing any working relationship and developing trust. I would urge the ministry to look at this area and develop a strategy about travelling around. Maybe they’re already doing that, I’m not quite sure, but just with those few comments that I did receive, it kind of indicates to me that people weren’t aware of the staff at DAAIR or their specific duties. I know that some other, maybe federally or...I know that in the past that some people do go to the communities and travel around and develop this working relationship. It doesn’t have to be a specific visit; sometimes it’s just a knock at the band offices or the Dehcho First Nations office or the regional offices just to say hi and we’re in the neighbourhood kind of thing. The key thing is to develop that working relationship to develop consistency, to develop knowledge of who’s in DAAIR and what are they doing. I just wanted to bring that forward.

As well, of course, the second thing is I know that the Minister has indicated about the difficulty in being a representative department as well of our great northern Territory. I would urge him to

continue to work on their strategy to develop a more aboriginal representative in DAAIR. We’ll do whatever we can to support their initiative with recruitment and/or training and/or even transfer assignments from other departments; there are people that may express interest. I look forward to whatever strategy they develop to present to committee and maybe we can have some thoughts about their model because there are many, many, many different models out there about increasing interest from outside government and within government as well. I think that will really, really help the department and it will create further exposure too that they’re actually out there being proactive with the communities and saying, you know, is anybody interested in working with us, here’s what’s needed and if those levels aren’t there we’d be prepared to in-house train or whatever it takes there, Mr. Chair. Those are my thoughts on the opening remarks. Mahsi cho.