Thank you. The meeting was short. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to have a one-on-one with the Prime Minister, but the three Premiers from the territories did have a meeting with the Prime Minister and we laid out a number of pan-territorial issues; housing, for example, as well as infrastructure.
I raised with Minister Aglukkaq the issue that was raised in the House here the other day around the Green Fund initiatives and our support for the city’s application.
Also, I had a chance to discuss where the pipeline initiative may be sitting and I expected the answer I got, that it’s in the proponent’s hands to make a decision on that, and talked about, for example, fibre optics is one of those avenues we could be looking at here in the Northwest Territories through support.
The Prime Minister asked me about this government’s move on the Inuvik-Tuk road, if we’ve met our side of the equation, and at that point raised that as our departments are getting together, they need to work out the actual arrangements and figure out this 75/25 percent share arrangement and what that would all incorporate. So there were those things that we were able to touch on.
Of course, with other Premiers there, they were bringing up their issues from their constituencies as well.
So I had a quick opportunity to raise some of those areas going forward. One of those things that we discussed was this continuation of the THSSI program and the fact that now we’re on the same page as all the other jurisdictions across Canada when it comes to the accord, Canada Health Accord. The Prime Minister at that point said we will need to get together as a country and really look at our ability to deliver a sustainable program, and I know that will be the challenge for the next governments as they prepare to deal with that accord. Thank you.