I don’t think it is helpful for us to go through all of the financial details. I think there is some disagreement about what should be funded and such, but I just want to say I am proud of the work that the centre does. I recognize the important work that the centre does. It is an integral part of a spectrum of services that we need to provide not only in Yellowknife, but also for a lot of people that use their service all across the Territories.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud, actually, of the level of funding that we have provided to the centre too, so it is not always about how much money you receive. I could give you the details of how much government has funded over the years. The fact is, we agreed that this centre is under financial difficulty. We are saying, along with the Education, Culture and Employment staff who are our senior management and have been meeting with the centre to get to more clear and precise answers as to why we are where we are in terms of their financial difficulty and what options we have to resolve those. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Your final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.

The Minister seems to insist on talking about details, and thinking that I am asking for details, and insisting she needs more details, and insisting on meeting about more details. What is needed here is decisive action to support this centre that provides a very important service. For example, this centre is paying $40,000 per year for rent on the building that they are in to the Housing Corporation. Is the Minister acting to work to get that forgiven or to provide funding specifically for that?

The Centre for Northern Families has an option to provide important advice to the child and family services review. Will the Minister provide support so that the centre can provide that important advice? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, in the fiscal year 2007-08, we have government departments combined, between Health and Social Services, Education, Culture and Employment, the Housing Corporation and MACA, about $940,000 to the organization. I understand and I appreciate; I am not going to challenge that. I have too much respect for the work that this centre does to argue about details of the money here, because I want to respect their privacy rights and such.

What I am saying is we value the work that they do. We are committed to working with them to support them, and that, in order for us to ensure financial stability of this organization in the long run, we need to get at what is causing the shortfall.

I believe that most of their debt is with Revenue Canada and it is not something that we could deal with by just writing the cheque. We need to get to the bottom of how do we work together and how do we get the long-term solution. I am committed as a Minister to have our officials meet and work together on that. They have met a number of times with the board and we will continue to do so.

With respect to funding for the standing committee process, I believe that is a separate budget item in this House that has to be dealt with by the committee. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Minister of Justice. In my Member’s statement I spoke to a particular situation which, unfortunately, transpired over the last eight to nine months, and I wonder if the Minister could explain to me why this particular individual had to endure an eight-month wait before he could get out for an assessment. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Minister of Justice, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I do believe this certain circumstance is before the courts. Really, the case is before the court currently and I cannot, therefore, comment any further on this particular case. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Ms. Bisaro, did you have another question that is not pertaining to the...Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question was addressed to the process, not to the individual. I wonder if the Minister could explain to me, and to the House, what our current situation is with regard to agreements that we have for providers of...who we have who provides psychiatric assessments for us in the NWT, who they’re with and what our situation is with that. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the assessment, we deal with the Alberta hospital and Alberta jurisdiction. Those are the agreements that we have to deal with these inmates that are going through the process. But, certainly, we can gather more information for the Member on the numbers of agreements that we have in place with other jurisdictions, as the Member alluded to earlier. Mahsi.

I appreciate the offer from the Minister to get me the information on who we have agreements with and where they are. I presume most of our agreements are with Edmonton or

Calgary organizations. But I wonder, if we have agreements with outside of Alberta, with Saskatchewan, Manitoba, B.C., etcetera, or if we have them with a number of different communities or cities, how is it that as a matter of course it takes an awfully long time for an inmate to get a psychiatric assessment? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, there are psychiatric assessments being done recently with Alberta, but we have to work with the Alberta government, the hospital there. It’s all based on the beds that are available. That’s why it took some time. Then there was a bed available, so that gave us the opportunity to assist the individual. So, certainly, Mr. Speaker, we deal directly with Alberta, but I have to gather more information on outside of Alberta, if there are any agreements. As far as I know, there are agreements particularly with Alberta. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Your final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thanks to the Minister for that. I guess I would reiterate that if we are dealing only with Alberta and that’s not suiting our needs, then we need to look beyond Alberta and look to other jurisdictions and make agreements with other hospitals, other organizations, other provinces.

My final question to the Minister has to do with the suggestion in my Member’s statement. As the Minister responsible for Justice and several other departments, I’d like to ask him to comment on the suggestion whether or not the department has ever considered the possibility of developing our own psychiatric assessment and treatment centre here in the NWT. Thank you.

Certainly I need to get back to my department on what kind of discussions they’ve had in the past or current. If they have discussed options or alternative measures to deal with that assessment tool, then certainly we can discuss those alternatives as the Member discussed earlier, possibly dealing with other jurisdictions. Those are discussions that we need to have. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Kam Lake, Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Premier and it gets back to some of the questions that I had last week when it comes to devolution and resource revenue sharing. I just wanted to follow up a little bit on that, if I could. I’ve spoken in the past about the approach the Government of the Northwest

Territories is taking to devolution and I’m wondering why the Government of the Northwest Territories wouldn’t look at an incremental approach to devolution, specifically in the area of minerals, oil and gas. I’d like to ask the Premier that question. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The process that’s been engaged by previous governments and the process we picked up on was one that included a package combination of devolution and resource revenue sharing. It engaged the aboriginal leadership across the Territories. We started off on that footing, as well, and looked for an additional infrastructure commitment from the federal government attached to that. That’s the process we would go. If we want to change the approach, then we would have to relook at that file to see if, in fact, we wanted to take it down, as we have in the past. For example, when health and social services was transferred to the Northwest Territories, transportation and so on. Thank you.

Yes, with health and transportation, those are areas of our operation that cost us money. When I talk about minerals, oil and gas, those are areas of our operation where, if done properly and we get control over those areas, we could actually benefit, fiscally benefit from the federal government devolving those responsibilities to the Government of the Northwest Territories.

Last week I also mentioned the fact that it’s close to $300 million that the federal government is currently taking in resource revenue from the Northwest Territories. So I’d like to ask the Premier, if it does take us changing gears, how could that happen? Would he engage the aboriginal leaders across the Territory and we could go after minerals, oil and gas with the aboriginal governments’ say in that as well? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, indeed, the approach would be through the regional leaders table that we’ve established. Our next meeting will be later on during this month and the devolution and resource revenue sharing re-engagement with the federal government will be one of the items we’ll be having discussions on. Thank you.

Again, the reason this is becoming important, we’re talking recently about changes to the diamond policy area and the fact that the Government of the Northwest Territories really doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to trying to ensure that the producing mines here in the Territory offer up the value-added industry that we’re trying to support as a government. So, again, I’d like to ask the Premier, will the Premier put that item on the agenda when the regional leaders meet again in November? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I would say that, number one, through our socio-economic agreements with the industry, we have secured a supply of rough diamonds potentially for our own secondary industry and that’s why it’s been going on for as long as it has. Secondly, the commitment to sit down at the regional leaders table, I did make that. We are going to be sitting down with them later on this month and re-engagement of devolution and resource revenue sharing will be one of the items that we will have discussion on so we can incorporate just to what level we’d like to see that re-engagement happen on. Thank you.