I guess clearly, for the record, because there’s been comments made by many since the signing and the idea of the signing to say that there’s been zero involvement. The facts speak for themselves. There has been involvement right from the Aboriginal Summit days through the hiring of consultants, lawyers, negotiators, through to even involvement in this last year by a number of the groups to either be at the table, to hear what’s being said and to make comments there or to be as a full participant at that table to do the work that’s necessary to get the right language in.
Going forward on a devolution piece, one could say that this is a continuation of devolution. When you look at the very first programs that were drawn down by the Government of the Northwest Territories, even the matter of housing which is spoken about at many of the regional meetings we’ve gone and community meetings. They talked about Aboriginal housing, for example, specific funding. Education, forestry, transportation, all of those have gone through a devolution process. This is another stage. It’s understandable, it is one that has a lot of emotion attached to it because in one area you do have settled claims and within those settled claims -- and the Inuvialuit are included, the Gwich’in, the Sahtu -- that have Crown lands within the settlement areas that are managed by the federal government and it’s that management piece that would come in place.
The agreement-in-principle speaks to having existing structures remain in place. That means the co-management bodies that are there would remain there and any changes to that would have to be in full consultation with Aboriginal groups going forward. Again, it’s full speculation as to the final agreement. We’re talking about two years out potentially of a final agreement being looked at as to whether it should be assigned by the
governments-of-the-day. I can’t speculate on that, but quite clearly if you look at the existing drawdown of authorities across the history of the Northwest Territories, there were two parties involved in those agreements right from health care to education to justice to transportation to forestry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.