When you have over 30 chiefs sitting there, these are the level of aboriginal governments that are going to be established in the Northwest Territories. We’re asking another government to participate. I’m asking the Minister or the Premier in terms of is it something that is going to be a policy where when you have 30 chiefs sitting down, that the Premier or the Cabinet would send one or two Ministers to be there out of courtesy to sit with another level of government.

We have a process in place now that we meet with the regional leadership and have a bilateral process. In fact, as I just said earlier, we just finished a meeting with regional leaders in November and we’re already into planning preparations for the end of March with the regional leaders. So it takes a long time to get the agendas together, to get the necessary information together, so that we can have these meetings. We will do the same in advance notice of the Dene Leadership Meetings. There are many examples where we have Ministers and myself who have been to the leadership meetings to make presentations as well. It’s just unfortunate that the notice came late and we already had commitments by the Ministers that had invitations. When you look at the agenda, there was no request, we were not on the agenda as Ministers making presentations.

When you have 30 leaders, 30 chiefs sitting down, it’s just obvious that this government should send one or two Ministers to a meeting out of courtesy to listen to the chiefs. Sometimes we don’t go by an agenda. Sometimes the issues come outside the agenda. It’s just obvious that this government, as leaders, attend a national territorial leadership meeting. Again, I want to ask the Premier in terms of not a process, but is there some type of policy that in the future that Ministers would be attending the Dene national chiefs meeting.

We make every effort to attend the aboriginal leadership meetings across the Northwest Territories. We can provide the information of how many meetings we have attended. It is important that we work together on that basis. That is why, for example, we’re trying to solidify an ongoing relationship that is put in place and recognized at the regional leaders’ table. For example, the last meeting we tabled -- the example is the Council of the Federation -- that with the regional leaders. We hope to build on that going forward.

Thank you, Premier Roland. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Sometimes when important meetings are called about such issues as the caribou, it’s very important to people in my region here. It would seem that it would be a given that the Minister of at least ENR or another Minister attend this meeting with some heavy discussions here. Again, it’s called meeting some of the needs of our people here. I would ask again if it’s a policy of this government or Cabinet can be looked at and see if future meetings can be attended by some of the Ministers as a standard policy.

First and foremost we are putting in place the relationship that we have with regional leaders. Mr. Bill Erasmus is involved in that by notification of our meetings, the agendas and so on. We have been, for example in Lutselk’e at that Dene Assembly there, attended with a number of our Ministers, including myself. When we’re given enough notice, we try to be as flexible as possible and we’ll continue to do that. I’ll sit down with the Dene national chief, Bill Erasmus, to talk about a process we can set in place and that hopefully he can provide us enough lead time so we can work on making sure we have appropriate representation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Colleagues, I’m going to request that you consider keeping your questions and answers maybe a little bit shorter. We’ll be lucky to get eight Members to ask questions at the rate we’re going today so… The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I gave a Member’s statement on Mr. Maurice Lockhart. It was interesting that at the time of his passing Maurice Lockhart was doing repairs and painting his house. I have questions for the Minister responsible for Seniors.

Mr. Speaker, in many of our aboriginal communities it’s very common for elders living in their homes. However, when it comes to assistance, sometimes the assistance comes very slowly. Can the Minister responsible for Seniors tell me if there are any discussions with other Ministers to ensure our government provides the seniors with expedient and quality service? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Minister responsible for Seniors, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for the questions. Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to be the Minister responsible for Seniors and I do deal with issues that deal with seniors that goes across the government. But when

it comes to administering programs and delivering services to our people, whether it be in income security or in housing or in health and social services and other areas, each department is responsible for delivering those programs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, will the Minister commit to developing a protocol where there is regular dialogue with other Ministers on seniors’ services and seniors’ issues? Thank you.

Yes, I would be happy to look into that. We do, as social service Ministers, or social envelope Ministers have met and we do meet, but with the Strategic Initiatives committees under Building Our Future, a lot of our work falls under that, so we’ve been doing that work under that committee. But I will be happy to undertake this task and work with the Member as the chair of the committee to see how we can refine this process. Thank you.

It’s not a health question. Mr. Speaker, another major concern, however, is health. Can the Minister tell me if she has developed some sort of strategy to ensure that the seniors in our small, isolated communities are given the best possible and timely care? Thank you.

Seniors issues and the provision of services in Health and Social Services for seniors is not just a small issue in a small community, but it’s emerging as one of the biggest challenges that our government faces and will continue to face. It is a big area of work and task and challenge that the department is working on. So I think in coming days we will be discussing more on that. So I want to put that out there and specifically to small communities, yes, we continually work with the communities, regional health authorities and every partner to deliver and improve our services to seniors. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister commit to working with the other Ministers on creating a centre for seniors programs to create sort of a consolidated approach to assisting the seniors to decrease any delays for services to seniors? Thank you.

I believe an issue similar to this was looked at before, and I’d be happy to share with the Member and the committee on that front. Mr. Speaker, I think in making sure that our seniors get the services they need, whether it’s housing, transportation, health and social services, income security, whether it’s the tax provision or income deduction, I think the fastest service is delivered when an issue comes up. It’s dealt with at the department level right away, and it’s something that we do. All the Ministers do that on a daily basis

and, obviously, we could continue to work on improving that, but, yes, we do that. That’s our core business. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’re going to be briefing committee at the rise of the House and we have a lot of detail to share with the Members. But I think the big key point is I don’t think there is one particular reason you can point to. There is the human impact, there is the climate change, resource development, increased roads, accessibility, permafrost, insects, changing rain in the middle of winter. There’s any number of issues. I think one of the big points is that the human impact is probably going to be more significant than ever before in the past where there’s been the cycles and this time it looks very serious, but we are working to understand this and capture all those variables as best we can. Thank you.

I think it’s clearly important that we do that. I didn’t really hear harvest mentioned as a factor, but many of us that were hunting in the ‘90s clearly remember the big two-ton trucks of caribou, 150 animals in a truck, heading down the highway, and expressed a lot of concern without any action being taken. I hope that’s included in the thinking on what caused this.

But moving on, what support was received during consultations prior to establishing the hunting ban through consultation with aboriginal governments and co-management boards? Thank you.

The Member is correct; the harvesting, the more the numbers dropped, the greater the impact of the harvesting, especially if harvesting levels stay the same as when the herd was healthy. In a state of decline, if we don’t affect those numbers, the impact is significant.

This whole process, Mr. Speaker, keeping in mind your caution about short answers, initially it was going to be worked through the Wekeezhii process, with our report to them with our recommendations, ourselves and the Tlicho Government. The dates that the Wekeezhii Board were able to do things moved, and as we got into December we recognized the need for measures, because there wasn’t going to be a report in time to get a response out in a timely manner, and we started the compressed process to consult with all the aboriginal groups to be ready to have some recommendations in place by the end of December.