This is page numbers 3945 - 3980 of the Hansard for the 16th Assembly, 4th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was work.

Topics

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Norman Yakeleya

Norman Yakeleya Sahtu

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When it comes to the issue here it seems like the rights of the aboriginal people have taken a back seat to the conservation issue here. This is a basic right given

by the Creator himself in terms of the relationship with the animals. This seems like it’s been taken away by this government here. That is the attitude. I want to ask the Minister with respect to resolving this issue as soon as possible to give the right back to the aboriginal hunters so they can feed their people. I ask the Minister if he can do that.

Michael Miltenberger

Michael Miltenberger Thebacha

That right is there. It’s not for us to change that right. What we want to do is make the right decisions on the conservation side to ensure that future generations have a resource they can hunt in the coming generations for our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and on into the future. That is the requirement for the conservation measures that are currently underway in the short term.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

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

David Ramsay

David Ramsay Kam Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve got some questions today and I guess I’ll give the Minister of Finance, who happens to be the Minister of ENR, a bit of a break and ask my questions to the Premier. It goes back to my Member’s statement from earlier today when I talked about government contracting and the fact that in 2008-2009 the Government of the Northwest Territories sole sourced a total of over $53 million in contracts. In the Department of Executive, for example, out of 39 contracts, 26 of them were sole sourced and some of these to former bureaucrats. I’d like to ask the Premier what strategy he has to address the fact that we’re relying so much on former bureaucrats and consultants in trying to do the work of the people in the Northwest Territories.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

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

Floyd Roland

Floyd Roland Premier

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The area of sole-sourced contracts, that is one of the tools that the government has available through our Contracts Policy, whether it is negotiated contracts, sole-sourced contracts, public tenders, requests for proposals, requests for qualifications. In the area of the Executive itself, this has been a practice that’s been in place for many years of sole-sourced contracts when we feel that it is necessary to hire an individual who we feel can get the work we need done. Whether it is in Ottawa or another provincial jurisdiction or whether it is in fact working with our own aboriginal partners in the Northwest Territories. It is a tool that we have available to use when we do this. We follow the guidelines that we have in place.

David Ramsay

David Ramsay Kam Lake

When you do go to a sole-source way of acquiring goods and services, like I said in my statement, the transparency and accountability

take a back seat to hiring whoever you want. I think the people in the Northwest Territories deserve a better way of doing things. I know there are times when sole-sourcing is required. But, for example, in the Department of Executive there is a communications firm, and I won’t mention any names. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone to that one outlet. Why wasn’t that put out to RFP? There are many communications companies here in the Northwest Territories that could have bid on that work. Why was that sole-sourced?

Floyd Roland

Floyd Roland Premier

The Member talks about a contract with a firm. I’m not aware of this specific issue that the Member has or the company and will appropriately not address it at this forum. I will be prepared if he wants to sit down with me over this issue and provide him information on that. Right now, without knowing the specifics, I don’t have it at my hands here to make any proper response to.

David Ramsay

David Ramsay Kam Lake

I will take the Premier up on that and give him the name outside of this forum. I wanted to ask the Premier whether or not the Government of the Northwest Territories is monitoring the level of reliance that this government has on consulting services. In my mind, it’s getting worse and whether or not we can try to rein in the spending that this government does in the area of consultants and hiring people to do the work on behalf of the government. Thank you.

Floyd Roland

Floyd Roland Premier

Mr. Speaker, on a regular basis, as we go through our process of approving contracts, there are guidelines that are used, whether they are low-level amounts that the authority has within a department’s authority spending levels or if it a director or even to the deputy minister and also to the Cabinet table. We do look at that, as right now ITI pulls all of our contracting information. We look at that information at times and look at what we’re doing and question department’s on some of the initiatives and why it was needed to go in that area. So we do do that review, yes.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Your final supplementary, Mr. Ramsay.

David Ramsay

David Ramsay Kam Lake

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, going through the contract book, I’d just like to ask the Premier: do former bureaucrats, deputy ministers, have any preferential treatment when it comes to being given sole-source contracts by this government? Thank you.

Floyd Roland

Floyd Roland Premier

Speaker, there is no preferential treatment given to anyone in the Northwest Territories. They have to bring their qualities and qualifications to the table. Now, as the Member has pointed out, there has been a history, whether it’s this government, previous governments, that use either past senior managers, and again, departments, Ministers have that authority to enter into some contracts. Being a

small jurisdiction, at times if the Minister or a department is comfortable with the work that has been provided, at times you need to use those people and those resources to continue on some work that may have been started and bring it to conclusion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.

David Krutko

David Krutko Mackenzie Delta

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again, getting back to my Member’s statement and also in regard to the whole area of change that has taken place since the famous Order-in-Council passed in 1960 by the federal Cabinet. Mr. Speaker, the Northwest Territories has had a grave history in regard to how aboriginal people have moved forward and trying to find ways of getting entrenched into the democratic system of the Northwest Territories regardless if it’s by way of ensuring that we were involved in the decision-making process, regardless if it’s regulatory management boards, economic measures. But again, Mr. Speaker, where a lot of these powers really took hold was in the Constitution Act amendments in 1982 in regard to the Canadian Constitution amendments which recognized and affirmed aboriginal rights under Section 35.

Since then, Mr. Speaker, we’re talking about something that took place in 1960. Yet, all these activities have changed the legal precedents that have been set. We have the Marshall case. We have court cases that have set precedents in Canada. But for a government to go back to 1960 and pull something out of the archives and say this is where I got my authority from is not the way that the government should be operating. We have the NWT Act. There’s a process to make amendments to the NWT Act. Why is this government not using that process to find ways to resolve this issue and do it by amendments to legislation that this government is responsible for in the NWT in regard to the Wildlife Act?

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

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

Floyd Roland

Floyd Roland Premier

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the area the Member goes into, he’s well aware, he’s negotiated for claims processes through the Sahtu and the Gwich’in as well, and he’s familiar with the legislation that we operate under. He’s been a Member of this Legislative Assembly for as long as I have, since 1995, and we know we both sit in this forum because of the NWT Act. I recall when my father was given the right to vote as well.

The issue that we have here is that we haven’t gone and dug out some piece of legislation that sat there. It is a part of the NWT Act. It is a part of an amendment the federal government made as it transferred the authority to the North and considered the possibilities of this situation. So we have the NWT Act that puts it in place, whether it is the legislative branch, the executive branch, the judicial branch, it puts it in place. We have within that the acts that have been transferred down to us and the authorities, so the Wildlife Act is one of those.

As Minister Miltenberger pointed out, we have been working through quite a number of years with our aboriginal partners in the North to up that piece of legislation, because we recognize, for example, the Tlicho Government is in place now, we recognize the land claim agreements that are in place now, and we need to update that. It is the area we have the most complex situation, is in the unsettled areas. For example, we have a clear process in the Gwich’in, the Inuvialuit, the Sahtu and the Tlicho. It is the unsettled areas where we have more of a complex procedure and arrangements and we’re continuing to try to work through those. Thank you.

David Krutko

David Krutko Mackenzie Delta

I think, as a government, we already have an avenue to try to resolve this issue. It’s trying to amend the NWT Wildlife Act to ensure that these situations we’re in now can be avoided in the future and, more importantly, entrench those legal obligations we have to First Nations people in regard to hunting rights, and spell it out in the NWT Act so that we know it’s clear that there is a process that when we have this situation we will have dialogue, we will have discussions and we will have a process to resolve our outstanding issues through a legislative process. Right now we don’t have that and that’s why we have the problem that we’re in. I’d like to know, by using that process, if that’s a better avenue than trying to go to court.

Floyd Roland

Floyd Roland Premier

Mr. Speaker, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with the Wildlife Act. In fact, this government is committed to bring it back to this Assembly before the end of the life of the 16th Assembly so we can bring more clarity to

the way we work together for the benefit of the people across the Northwest Territories. The Member is very familiar, as I am and other Members who have been around a long time, that we’ve tried to work through that process of the Wildlife Act through a number of Legislatures and where our goal is to have a new Wildlife Act put on the table for this Legislative Assembly to act. Thank you.

David Krutko

David Krutko Mackenzie Delta

Mr. Speaker, I believe we do have to have enabling legislation to pass what’s basically been negotiated in the land claim agreements, enable what’s already agreed to in Treaty 8, Treaty 11, for those unsettled areas, and ensure that we

clearly spell out those arrangements through the amendments to the Wildlife Act and bring it to this House and allow that to be the process to resolve this issue. I’d like to suggest to the Minister that we put everything aside, resolve this through those discussions, bring it to conclusion and bring it back to this House.

Floyd Roland

Floyd Roland Premier

Mr. Speaker, the process, as the Member is well aware, the Wildlife Act, as I stated earlier, has outlived a number of Assemblies. I believe it was the 14th Assembly that

we started the initial work, as some of us have been around that long, to try to update the Wildlife Act; the 15

th.

Assembly. We are now in the 16th Assembly and if we waited for that process, there’s no guarantee that there will be a satisfactory response. Maybe this Assembly might send it back for some other work. Meanwhile, as the Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, on the counts and the estimated harvest that happens on an annual basis, we could be faced with a situation that was faced with back in the ‘50s in the Beaufort-Delta when there was no caribou and the federal government had to bring reindeer herds in and that’s what people had to survive on. While we have the authorities, we see the numbers, we need to work with our partners. The Minister has been working to try to bring this to a satisfactory conclusion. We know we need to do that, and we continue to work on that basis. Thank you.

The Speaker

The Speaker Paul Delorey

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Your final, short supplementary, Mr. Krutko.

David Krutko

David Krutko Mackenzie Delta

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again, I strongly recommend to the government and this Cabinet to do away with the bickering and get on with the process. We went through a whole process on Species at Risk. We did a good job there. We allowed consultation. We allowed involvement of the aboriginal groups at that table to be part of the drafting team. I think we have to do the same thing in regard to the Wildlife Act. I’d like to ask the Premier: can we put aside our differences, move forward with a table to start these negotiations, get them concluded, and agree that we basically have to find an avenue of consultation to get out of this mess that we find ourselves in? Thank you.

Floyd Roland

Floyd Roland Premier

Mr. Speaker, the process of the Wildlife Act is in gear. We are working with the aboriginal governments in the Northwest Territories to update that piece of legislation. In fact, at one of our first regional leaders’ tables, we started to work on a bit of process to move these initiatives forward. The Species at Risk Act is an example of that: working together. We will continue to work on that initiative. In the meantime, we have a very serious problem facing us here in the Northwest Territories. Conservation measures have

been taken. We continue to work with the groups that are involved. We have agreement and support on the conservation initiatives and the outstanding group is the Yellowknives. The work is ongoing there. The Minister told us earlier he continues to work to try to find a solution with the Yellowknives. We hope that we can come to a satisfactory conclusion in this area. Thank you.