Page 2-22, Department of Executive, activity summary, executive operations, grants and contributions, grants, total grants, $350,000.

Contributions, total contributions, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had a question with regard to the contributions under devolution negotiations. I note that in ‘11-12 the estimate is the same amount of money for the last year, the current budget year, for $40,000. In light of where things are at with regard to an AIP and devolution negotiations going forward, is that amount of money going to be enough? Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, we don’t believe it will be enough and we will have to come forward in a supplementary appropriation manner to request additional funding once we know how many groups would like to go through the format as I was speaking to Mr. Menicoche. So we will expect we

will have to come forward to this Assembly for additional funds. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Next on my list I have Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I seek unanimous consent to go back to the previous page, 2-21.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Committee, the Member is asking to return to page 2-21. Committee agree?

Go ahead, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I too, like Mr. Menicoche, strongly feel that this government has to work with the interested parties regardless if they sign on or not, and we still have to find a compromise, find a middle ground, find an area we can work from. I was hoping that prior to signing we were going on the right track with the protocol agreement being signed, the Premier meeting with the Aboriginal governments in Edmonton and more importantly the Aboriginal groups had an opportunity to look at their different positions. I think because of what has happened, we were all under the impression that we were going to try to get a majority of the Aboriginal groups on side before any signing took place. Again, that didn’t happen.

So regardless of whether they’re here today, we’re still in a bad spot in regard to trying to find an arrangement where we can work with our Aboriginal partners to find a way to work around this. I know there's been situations in the past and what I was suggesting prior to the signing for Ministers is to consider an agreement-in-principle and attach the Protocol Agreement as a secondary agreement to the signing where you could come at it from both sides. I know in the Dene/Metis process we never always agree, but we always try to have wording in it that allows the room to look at either the extinguishment clause or looking at the overall interests in regard to treaty aspects. You are dealing with a complicated process here where you have settled claims, you have unsettled claims, you have treaty rights and I think you’ve got to be realistic that it is a complicated arrangement. I think we also have to realize we have constitutional obligations to consult, regardless if it’s morally, physically or basically, well, you signed, and you didn’t, so I’ll pay the person that signed but I’m not going to give any money to the person that didn’t. Regardless of that, the government has an obligation under the land claim agreements, especially in the Gwich’in Agreement, the Sahtu Agreement, the Tlicho Agreement, that they have to involve those groups in the development and implementation of the Northern Accord. The development implementation means that you revisit the document that you signed, subject to those

areas of interest and I think it’s pretty clear going to the different court cases that consultation is more than simply saying, well, I went to your regional assembly, or I went to a band meeting. It’s got to be meaningful; meaningful in the confines of actually having an opportunity to sit down with your lawyers, look at the documents, see exactly does that meet the expectations of the people you represent and, more importantly, moving forward.

So I’d just like to ask the Premier, in light of the responses you gave to Mr. Menicoche, is there that opportunity still out there for that type of dialogue to take place? It can happen in a whole different venue than the Northern Leaders’ Forum, but I think sitting through the Dene Nation leadership meetings, they are trying to compromise, they are trying to find a venue where they can develop a working group, a working group similar to the group that was in place to develop the political accord or political protocol so you have representatives from the different interest groups and you’re able to sit down and format your positions. If that means starting from the protocol, for me that means at least let’s meet them somewhere. I’d again like to ask the Premier if he can consider that as a possibility going forward. We still have a table to play on, which is the Northern Leaders’ Forum. It still exists. There are still funds that have been allocated to that format. I know for a fact that we have $50,000 from the Members on this side of the House to partake of that process. We haven’t spent that. I’d like to know if that is an area we can consider in light of where we’re at with the devolution talks.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. Mr. Roland.

Mr. Speaker, I guess first, the fund that Mr. Krutko spoke of -- $50,000 -- that was in a different category under the Creating Our Future Together scenario which didn’t take into consideration the agreement-in-principle. That table was a side table to the regional leaders’ discussions that were ongoing.

As for the consultation and approach, although much has been said about the signing and the timing of the signing, it all comes out of the framework agreement that was signed and a memorandum of intent that was reached in 2001 by the Government of the Northwest Territories Premier, the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, the Aboriginal leaders from the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, the Gwich’in Tribal Corporation, Dogrib Treaty 11 Tribal Council, North Slave Metis Alliance, Akaitcho First Nation, Sahtu Secretariat Incorporated, Sahtu Dene Council and Deline First Nation. The Dehcho First Nation was an observer at those meetings. That’s where this got its life and moving forward beyond the talks of a Northern Accord that the Member has highlighted that is

included in a number of the agreements that were signed and that agreement appended to which, unfortunately, never got the endorsement and final sign-off, although it’s appended to a number of the agreements. Based on that, still using that as a principle, when you follow the history of this, it has included and been an inclusive process from the start and we want to continue that process. That’s why from 2008 when negotiations were delayed because of the federal election process in 2009, when there was a number of outstanding bilateral issues that were dealt with between the GNWT and the federal government and those bilateral issues were brought back to the table for all the Aboriginal groups to be updated, followed through to the process we found ourselves in. As the Member touched base, I had a meeting in late August with regional leaders and told them I expected a letter to be coming forward from the chief negotiators saying they’ve reached their mandate. In fact, in September that letter was sent to myself and Minister Duncan and additional letters were sent to all of the regional leaders to invite them to comment on that. That’s when we sat together in early November to discuss a way forward with that intent and agreed to a protocol work, as the Member has highlighted.

That protocol work we asked to have something, a draft by the end of November, which we then went into early December. I met with a number of the representatives from that working group and again asked them for an early draft so that we may be able to put language in, if there was concern with language, seeing as that was a protocol between all parties, that we’d be able to work through that. I was informed that they were continuing on a number of drafts and that January 6

th

I met with the

regional representation of the leadership group again and some of their technical staff to go over the work and again ask for an early copy of a draft so we might be able to respond. We received a final draft I believe it was on the 14

th

. We did a quick

review of that and suggested alternate wording, then met with the leadership again on the Sunday prior to the signing of the agreement and tried to find a way forward on there. Unfortunately we were unable to find a solution at that point. I guess what, as I was saying to Mr. Menicoche, is the letter we sent out to all the regions, the leadership to say we’re prepared to go and sit down and discuss the AIP and what it includes and what needs to be done next on that. So we’re clearly still there waiting for a response to that letter.

I say we’re prepared to do that but I must also say that if the wish is to stop the AIP and renegotiate an AIP, the Member from his past experience as a negotiator knows that you have to get a mandate to negotiate. As both chief negotiators sent a letter to the regional leaders, that mandate was reached. We’re moving forward on the agreement-in-

principle and I believe many of the issues that we can use going forward as negotiation items and set those mandates. Again, we’re looking, as I pointed out, to putting a budget in place to reach out to the groups again and see if we can find a way forward for those groups to come on board and begin the technical work.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Before I go back to Mr. Krutko, are there any other questions on page 2-21? Seeing none, Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I mean, we are at a crossroads where someone has to give a little bit to allow this process to work itself out. I think we can’t be focussing only on one area, realizing we could jeopardize not only the area of devolution for the Northwest Territories but the whole political development of the Northwest Territories. In the confines of improving our working relationship with the indigenous governments of the Northwest Territories. For me that is something we cannot jeopardize. There are threats of court actions and everything else. For me that is the last place you want a devolution agreement to end up before you even get to a table. There again it’s something that is real. The possibility is pretty good.

The other issue we have to realize is how do we continue to message this thing. I was listening to the radio the other day and I couldn’t sit there wondering about the message that you were trying to get out. The message is we gave the Aboriginal groups for devolution and they were involved. Well, everybody that knows and spent some time in this Legislature know that the majority of that $8 million was spent on something called an Aboriginal Summit, which was made up of consultants, legal beagles, which the Aboriginal leadership walked away from because they lost control of it. Ourselves as government, the majority of that $8 million was spent on the Aboriginal Summit. That was during that period of time that the Aboriginal groups reformatted themselves and decided to come back with a northern leaders’ concept where only northern leaders were able to partake in the process going forward because of that bad experience of how that took on a life of its own and spent a ton of money on consultants and lawyers and everything else and not really meeting the priorities of the Aboriginal leadership.

We just had a debate here a couple pages ago about NGO funding. We’re spending millions of dollars on NGO funding every year and I don’t see the Government of the Northwest Territories posting that on the website and putting out a thing that we spend $2 million here on NGO funding and who’s getting what. For me, I don’t think that messaging is fair and it’s not clear and if you’re going to put that type of message on, you should clearly identify how that $8 million was spent and

what type of groups it was spent on. There were Aboriginal groups that didn’t take any of that money because they didn’t want to be seen as taking money from the government to partake in a process they didn’t believe in.

I think it’s how we develop that message and getting that information out. I’d like to ask the Premier if there is a possibility that you can publicly categorize the dollars that have been spent on devolution and NGO funding so that we can release it to the public and show them who exactly those dollars were spent by and what they were spent on.

The message that’s gone out is one from our office at the Executive because we held the agreements with the groups and have identified them in past discussions. The groups had to sign off and sign contribution agreements. The summit process was one that was initially made up of the leadership. The Member is correct that it did get tied into hiring of a lot of additional... Well, I don’t know if it was a lot, but it was considered to take out and it evolved into more of, for no better words, a bureaucratic process between consultants and lawyers and groups with some mixing of political leadership. Clearly the work that was done still was in the format and developing the agreement-in-principle and as you look forward when you go back and look at the year 2007, the work that was done by the summit lead to an agreement signed by the then Government of the Northwest Territories and a number of the Aboriginal groups and that got sent in to Ottawa. Of course we know that did not get endorsed by the federal government and I might say probably thankfully, because at that point it had even lesser financial value than this agreement holds. We can clearly put out the numbers there and it would be up to the groups to point out who they hired and the specific purposes that they hired the lawyers for and some of the consultants.

More importantly, going forward, looking at this and where we are today, in the life of this government we’ve tried to build that regional leadership table to move forward on key initiatives and the letter that we sent out to the regional leaders and the community leadership, again we’re reaching out to find a way forward on this process. Some of the difficulty lies, and because we’re so many different tables at different levels we do have, as the Member pointed out, land claims that are established and protected. We have one self-government in the Northwest Territories that’s a comprehensive process and then we have a number of groups negotiating a comprehensive process or, as the Member for Nahendeh mentioned, the Dehcho process has felt they need to go through that process. That does make it very complicated. That’s why we’re prepared to come back to the Assembly through a supplementary process to get additional dollars and respond to the

request to go into the communities to go through the agreement-in-principle. The issue becomes, as much as I said at the Sahtu meetings I was at recently, that the issue of self-government and self-government financing are much bigger than the agreement-in-principle. Clearly the agreement-in-principle is a drawing down of existing authorities now practiced, in a sense, by the federal government and their staff. We’re trying to pull that into the North.

With regard to the operations expenditure summary I note under contract services you have $423,000. Is there a chance we could get a breakdown of that?

Yes, we will provide that detail.

Just on the question about drawing down government type, I think that is the area of contention in the devolution agreement with regard to Section 5 which talks about government powers and whatnot. I think that’s where a lot of Aboriginal groups have concern with regard to their land claims agreements. They have regulatory obligations under those agreements. They have been basically dealing with land, water and resources. You’re not only talking just the land claim, you’re talking about water resources where they have water resource sections of the agreement and surface rights sections. Even in those agreements it talks about that government has to consult in regard to the establishment of regulations, policies, procedures in which the government will change those, regardless if it’s the federal government or the GNWT. It’s in the land claim agreements and I think that that has not been really looked at in light of the devolution process, because it will have… Everybody says it’s not going to affect your land claims. It will affect your land claims, because the same thing you’re after the Aboriginal groups are after in regard to control of their settlement regions and everything that happens in and basically have eventually a self-government agreement that will allow you to take over those types of government-like powers through the self-government agreement in regard to having the ability to manage and also have the regulatory types of responsibilities that this government is looking at.

I’d just like to know, in light of Section 5 of the devolution agreement, have we looked at those sections which talk about the government-like powers which are going to be transferred over from the federal government to the Government of the Northwest Territories. I’d just like to know, have you got a legal arrangement...(inaudible)...talks about regulation, exploration development, and it talks about the whole establishment required for surface rights, insurance in relation to subsurface resources in the settlement region? I’d just like to know, have

you looked at that when you mention that the land claim agreements aren’t going to be affected by devolution?

I guess one of the things, we have looked at all of these and a number of these negotiations have to occur to bring final clarity as to the roles and responsibilities, but clearly, if you look at chapter 5, Transfer of Responsibilities, existing rights, 5.3, the transfer of administration on control of public lands and rights in respect of waters to the Commissioner, pursuant to Section 5.1 shall not: (a) affect any existing right or interest or trust including any existing interest in respect of public lands; (b) affect any existing right including any existing interest in respect of waters; or (c) abrogate or derogate from: (i) any Aboriginal or treaty right including any right under Treaty 8 or Treaty 11 of the Aboriginal Peoples of Canada; or (ii) any fiduciary duty or obligation of the Crown to the Aboriginal People of Canada including any obligation provided by the Constitution of Canada.

It’s that kind of language that’s throughout this agreement-in-principle that was put there because of the involvement of the groups that helped in the designing of the agreement-in-principle. Clearly, we’ve gone to significant levels to protect the Aboriginal rights as we go through this process and going forward.

The issue, for example, that the Member has highlighted of regulatory reform, while the federal government started this process of regulatory reform a while back and I guess what I would say is if that was in our control we would absolutely be in consultation going forward, and in fact, by being at the table would influence going forward what those types of things would look like. For example, in our discussions amongst Members here in writing and meeting with the liaison of the Minister of INAC supported the existing roles in there, in fact, that they needed to be enhanced to get the job done they were required to do. I don’t think we’re very far off from sort of the same principles from that, and in fact, I guess I would say when you look at the overall picture, the very essence of the negotiations that have happened to date is, in a sense, coming to fruition by signing this agreement and being at the table. It’s not a matter of being consulted anymore. It’s a matter that they’re going to be partners in designing and implementing, and that, I think, is a huge step as we go forward into the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Committee, we’re on page 2-21, Department of Executive, activity summary, executive operations, operations expenditure summary, $7.010 million. Mr. Beaulieu.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have questions on the AIP as well. As it stands, all of the Dene, I suppose, have not been involved in

the signing of the AIP. That constitutes about 22 communities across the North. I don’t know what the percentage of population that is, but maybe 40 percent of the population not really involved in the signing of it. My question for the Premier is would the AIP ever evolve into a devolution agreement without the participation of the people that are covered by Treaty 8 and Treaty 11 within the Northwest Territories?

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Premier Roland.