Mr. Chairman, I guess you can say there are a couple of Members of this House who have past experience at the negotiation table themselves and they know very clearly in their minds what they were negotiating at the time. But for those of us and for the future generations who refer to those agreements and they read the words on the page, you will not find government will sign MOUs. There will be activities that the government is involved with that will, when it comes to preferential treatment, work with the land claim group or self-government, as agreements will in the future identify that the government will then give that group the preferential treatment when it comes to, for example, negotiated contracts, sole-source contracts and that nature. There is much work to be done.
In areas further to implementation, I think we all agree that as these agreements are in place, many of them have taken a long time to get certain pieces in place. Part of it is because as the Government of the Northwest Territories when we look at the whole of the Territory and try to come up with legislation that works for the Territory, it’s quite difficult when we have some groups that have signed, settled and are getting down to work, as they say, and for other groups, they’re in the negotiation process and they say, well, we don’t want to be a part of that just yet because they feel they’re in the negotiation phase and this may hinder them in certain aspects. We’ve always tried to put our language and our legislation and policies that with any agreement and legislation we put in place will not take away from the aboriginal rights of people in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.