Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Premier fielding all these questions today on behalf of Cabinet. I’d like to say, first of all, that I’m pleased that there was a good discussion had with Grand Chief Sam Gargan and I’m wondering if the Premier can share with us either in this format, or Caucus, or committee, what those discussions were and how they were good. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. They were very good for me, first of all, because the Dehcho Grand Chief is planning to organize the community feast for me in Fort Providence at some point in November, and he wants me to visit all of the different institutions there and meet all of the people again. So I was happy with that. I’m very pleased to do so. We’re working on a date.

We had a good discussion on where the Dehcho First Nation is at, the Dehcho process and how his views are on the land use planning framework, how the different governments can interact, and we had a discussion on devolution and constitutional development. We did all this in a fairly short time frame, but I think we were both pleased with the meeting. Thank you.

Thank you. I also heard the Premier say that he’d met with most of the other

Aboriginal government leaders. Is there anything he can share from discussions with them, too, beyond invitations to feasts and stuff? I’d be interested in how we’re moving forward on some of the key issues that are before us. Thank you.

Thank you. I had the opportunity to either meet or call most of the leaders, and most of them are still in a positive frame, and they’re willing to continue to have discussions on how to find ways to work together and to see if we can set up a process and define common ground. Thank you.

Thank you. It sounds like a good start, a good follow-up to the Friday meeting. I like the positive stuff. I am looking forward to hearing about progress on the real issues. Will the Premier be updating us regularly on these sorts of discussions on relationships with our Aboriginal government partners? Thank you.

Thank you. It was my intention to debrief with the MLAs on the different Aboriginal governments, the regions. I could also do it collectively, if that is the wish of the Assembly. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Bromley. Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my Member’s statement today I talked about addressing the addictions problem, and perhaps, maybe, we could actually gain ground this particular Assembly and deal with this particular issue. Now, I don’t suspect any Assembly – although it would be nice – or any government ever to fully deal with that particular problem, but the important thing is never to surrender to allow addictions to happen in the manner that it is, as well as the fact of how little it’s actually been happening.

I highlighted the focus of the mandate of a particular department as well as this government, and what is little known by the public is that departments are given specific mandates by the Premier and ordered as marching orders. To shed a little light on that, that’s never really discussed publicly or else we would have known in advance at the beginning of the 16th Assembly about the

supplementary health benefits change, as well as a few others.

So my particular question to the Premier will be: when will the development of departmental mandates be seen, will there be engagement with Members on those developments, and when do we expect some type of discussion on those particular mandates that individual departments will get the

marching orders on that Ministers will have to comply with? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m anticipating that once we assign portfolios, that we’ll also be providing mandate letters to each of the Ministers and that will be reflected in the business planning process that we do through this Legislative Assembly. Thank you.

Thank you. The Premier didn’t address the question about specific mandates and I highlighted the point about supplementary health benefits. That was a Cabinet decision mandate handed out to the department to fulfill. It didn’t have Regular Members involved in that type of decision.

Suggesting that we wait for the business plans for these holistic mandates is great, but before you put any bologna on the table, it’s the decisions made in Cabinet that are the ones that are the real meat and potatoes of the government’s marching orders. Those are the types of mandates I’d like to find out.

When will the Premier be issuing specific mandates to departments as to the objectives created in Cabinet for that direction? I’m not talking about the Caucus feel good statements; I’m talking about the ones that get down to the nuts and bolts and direction of government. Thank you.

Thank you. We normally wait until we go through our strategic planning exercise with the whole Caucus where we, as a government of the 17th Assembly, identify our

vision, we identify our priorities and then we develop our goals and objectives. At that point we’ll be giving specific marching orders to the departments. Thank you.th Assembly the Department of Health was given the mandate to start hacking away at supplementary health benefits, and in no way that was ever discussed in a Caucus discussion and in no way that was developed in Caucus visioning. But yet, the Department of Health was marching to the orders given by the Premier of the day. That’s the concern I specifically have here. So is the Premier saying here today, without any doubt, that there are no mandates issued to any of the departments, and furthermore, is he also saying that all departmental mandates will be developed with all Members? Thank you.th Assembly we set

up a protocol which we all agreed to and we all agreed that there would be no surprises. There was nothing that was identified in the protocol that was going to be approved by the 16th Assembly that

would flow into the 17th Assembly. We’ve all agreed

that we’re going to get together and set the vision and strategy for the 17th Assembly, and we are

committed to that process and we will follow that process. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Premier and I’ll ask him this: when will we be seeing a meeting with all three territorial Premiers? They should be brought together to discuss common issues such as our economy, our infrastructure, our health and northern Aboriginal affairs. How can we speak as one voice, as a solid northern voice for the rest of Canada, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe that the three northern Premiers will probably get together before the next Council of Federation meeting. Normally the three Premiers get together to set the stage for the discussions that will happen when all of the Premiers are together. My expectation is probably the first chance for all the Premiers to get together is the end of November. I will have to confirm it, but my expectation is we will probably have a chance to get together before then. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.

: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask the Premier a question with regard to Rural and Remote Communities Working Committee that we established in the 16th Assembly. Would the Premier consider a similar working committee again or even establish the same one on behalf of the small and remote communities? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Although I wasn’t a member of that committee, in my estimation, it was a very good committee. It accomplished a lot and it provided for real change and improvements to the small communities. So if it is the wish of everybody here to continue it, I certainly would support it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Hay River South, Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Since we are talking about protocols and kind of laying the protocols and groundwork for protocols going forward for the 17th Assembly, when the

Premier just shared about his meeting with the grand chief and a little bit of the content of that and the invitation to go to Fort Providence, it kind of reminded me of a protocol that is very dear to my heart, and that is when people in communities, whether it be the town council, the hamlet council, an NGO, want to entertain or host or bring a Cabinet Minister or the Premier into their community, that they make the MLA the point of contact. There is a no more sinking feeling.

Outside of Yellowknife, you know politicians are everywhere, you see them on every street corner, but when you get out into the regions and into our communities, there is a no more sinking feeling to find out the Minister of Education is doing a tour of the schools this morning and you didn’t know about it. It’s a horrible feeling when you’re a Regular MLA and I think it just shows respect to the local MLA. If you’re meeting with the Sahtu leadership, then Mr. Yakeleya should be part of that meeting and part of that conversation.

I know it’s a small territory. We know everybody and people are going to contact you directly, but out of respect and as a protocol, would you share such a protocol with your Cabinet at the very outset? Thank you.