Thank you. The Minister has made reference to the document she’ll be discussing. I’m looking forward to seeing the result of the Foundation for Change with the Minister in terms of going forward in terms of establishing... (recording difficulties)

...with the Member. We toured all of the communities in Sahtu. Leadership did speak to us about a working relationship and interaction with the local health centres as well as health board. I’ll do my part to make sure that our board and our health care delivery system is accountable to our people. At the same time, I did encourage the local leadership and Grand Chief Andrew that there is... At any time when the community leadership have concerns or questions about the services or lack of, or good or bad or the

ugly, anything, I think health boards and health centres will benefit from that input and everybody should be encouraged to communicate to them. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say, on behalf of the Sahtu people, that the Minister of Health and Social Services has been the only Minister that has done a tour with me in the Sahtu of...

...so much that she has come twice to the Sahtu. I want to say that the people appreciate her to come and sit in and talk about these important issues. Mr. Speaker, we have some complaints, some serious complaints that are very serious to people in Deline, people in Fort Good Hope, people in Colville Lake. I want to ask the Minister when these complaints come forward, sometimes we have a backlash from the regional health boards in terms of staff members saying things that shouldn’t be said to the people in our communities. Would the Minister see that stuff like this doesn’t happen with our health board? People are afraid to come forward to launch or even to talk to me regarding health concerns, because sometimes they get feedback that isn’t very good from our health board.

Once again, I would like to say that in Sahtu region and every other region in the Territories, we do have very dedicated, qualified, skilful health and social services staff working hard to deliver programs and services. Mr. Speaker, I know sometimes things do go wrong. Sometimes people are not happy with the response they received with their medical treatment or medical emergency or counselling and one of the things that we are seeing that we need to improve on and that’s also part of Foundation for Change -- I’m afraid I’m going to have to mention this document a lot because it has lots of things to do with what we are working on -- one of the things we need to build more on is where do people go when they have complaints about medical health professionals that is independent, objective and not necessarily to the political force. That’s something we are working on as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to a solid policy where people can go and launch a complaint in their own language. Mr. Speaker, I’m speaking about this person in Fort Good Hope that went to the health centre. She was diagnosed about two weeks later with pneumonia. Mr. Speaker, that is unacceptable. We had a death in our community that should not happen. That is unacceptable. So, again, I look forward to a time when the Minister can outline a time where she can state in this House where policies on people with

long-term complaints regarding health care can be tabled in the House.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. I didn’t hear a question there. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am assuming most Members are aware when we were in Copenhagen the Premier and I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to Ms. Southern from ATCO about the Taltson expansion. Mr. Krutko and Mr. Abernethy, while they weren’t at the meetings, were clearly aware that we were having those discussions. So we’ve had some discussions with Ms. Southern on this issue. Thank you.

Thank you. That’s the first time I’ve actually formally heard those meetings taking place in Copenhagen. I had heard some rumours and so on. How does any discussions that have taken place or any agreements that may be arrived at, how does that tie in with the unsolicited ATCO proposal that has also been on the table of which we are awaiting the government’s review of that proposal? How is that related to the Taltson? Thank you.

I’ll indicate two things. First, these discussions are at the very preliminary stage and there is no link between these two. We are looking at trying to make sure

the Taltson project is able to go ahead and if we don’t within the next six to eight months come up with a way to make that happen, the Taltson project, for all intents and purposes, at least for the life of this Assembly and probably for at least three years or more will be put on a shelf. So there is no link. The issue is trying to make sure that we can move ahead on the Taltson. Thank you.

: Mr. Speaker, I assume that the discussions with Nancy Southern from ATCO were in a positive vein. I would like to ask the Minister what would be the next steps in pursuing a partnership to enable the GNWT to develop the Taltson hydro potential. What would the next steps in that process be? Thank you.

Given the very preliminary nature of our discussions, we are having some very basic discussions. The folks from ATCO are looking at all the public information that’s on the website to come up with a full understanding of the project. We are waiting to hear back from them in terms of, we were sharing some documents in terms of some basic points, principles that we could possibly look at if we were going to proceed with the discussions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Given the very public quasi announcement by the Minister of Finance today that the GNWT is looking for a partner on the Taltson hydro expansion, does the government have a plan if this information that’s been put out here today... If this has the effect of interesting other parties, potential other parties in this, does the government have a plan to deal with that so that this is not kind of just, you know, flying by the seat of our pants on this, that we actually aren’t just waiting to react to things, that in fact we have a plan going forward? Thank you.

We have an arrangement with partners already, which is compromised of ourselves, the Northwest Territories Metis and Akaitcho. We also recognize and they’re working on the partnership, they are working on the generation part of the project. But we also recognize, as I pointed out in my statement, that even with some federal assistance, we are not going to be able to proceed with this project unless we get outside help. We need a partner. So we’ve had some initial discussions recognizing that fact, recognizing that we have about eight months to get ourselves sorted out and we are going to focus our most immediate attention on that that is right before us before we look further afield. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I just want to start off by saying my reference earlier to the Deh Cho Bridge Project being a gong show is in no way meant to disparage the good work done by the Minister and his staff. I do appreciate that. It’s the project in general. I just wanted to state that for the record.

In my last question to the Minister I asked him what are the potential financial risks to the Government of the Northwest Territories via the Deh Cho Bridge Project. I would like the Minister to answer that question for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. The honourable Minister of Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of unknowns in this project, as we speak. The Bridge Corporation is negotiating with a contractor about price until sometime later on this month. It will continue to be ongoing until we have an agreement in place.

Of course, there may be termination fees that more than likely will come forward from the contractor that the Bridge Corporation couldn’t make a positive agreement with that we will probably have to deal with. There are still some outstanding claims that we don’t have the numbers on. Mr. Speaker, our goal is to include all of the issues that I mentioned as part of our final price. We are trying to keep that within our budget. However, that is going to remain an unknown until we have resolved some of these issues. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister: how are the Government of the Northwest Territories and its department working to mitigate the potential financial risk to the Government of the Northwest Territories in this project? Thank you.