Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The situation that has occurred there, one is it’s unfortunate in the sense that we were not able to have Ministers in attendance, but we need to set some of the facts straight in what led up to this.
Mr. Speaker, number one, not all Ministers attended the Gwich’in leaders and the Beaufort-Delta leaders meetings. Both Minister Bob McLeod and Minister Michael Miltenberger were not at those meetings. Two, the request for attendance at those meetings and the request to make presentations on departmental responsibilities were made months in advance so that we could set the time aside for those meetings. For the notice to the Cabinet Ministers of the Dene Assembly, the meetings that were occurring, we can provide Members notice that a notice was received by a number of the Ministers on January 13th and responded to in the
case of, for example, Minister Michael McLeod responded two days after the fact to the organization. Minister Lafferty, the same thing, within a few days responded to the Dene leadership about the invitation. Upon receiving the agenda it was clearly noted that the issues and the requests for ministerial presentations were not on the agenda, and by that time Ministers were well committed to quite a number of meetings beforehand.
In speaking to the Dene national chief, Mr. Bill Erasmus, I confirmed with him that we were prepared to sit down with him and the folks that he would want to on the issues arising from that meeting. As the Members know in this House, we as the Government of the Northwest Territories have stepped up our involvement and meetings with the regional aboriginal leaders and governments to build on a solid relationship. We’re prepared to sit down, given enough advance notice, to set time aside to make the appropriate presentations to aboriginal governments as well. Thank you.