Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to ask the Minister about the relationships we have with the Aboriginal governments. I know we have an Engagement Strategy. I guess it’s two-pronged. One, are we going to continue to support the efforts made by this government to strengthen our relationship with the Aboriginal governments right across the North? It’s pretty diversified and quite challenging. However, this should be strengthening our employees to not be so complacent and go out and expand their ability to look at different points of view, the different nations and different governments. We are on Aboriginal land, so come around to those types of issues. We also go to work together. That’s the end goal for these 42,000 people we have in the Northwest Territories. The big ticket prize is Ottawa. We have to keep our eye on that. How do we stay together? Sometimes we have to walk together, not one too far ahead of the other. I’m going to ask the Minister on those type of

discussions that we have with our Aboriginal governments.

The other area I want to ask is: How do we work effectively and efficiently with the people in Ottawa? The Minister talked about our relationship and we have a Federal Engagement Strategy with the Conservative government, Mr. Harper. They’re in power. They have the numbers. They certainly have given us some fairly good money to do some things here. I think we have a relationship that we know we can continue to benefit from. Sometimes I really don’t like what they’re doing, sometimes, but I guess Ottawa has more than the Territories to look after. I’d like to see how we can effectively use whatever tools we have in Ottawa to advance our initiatives such as territorial-wide projects like the Mackenzie Valley Highway, the fibre optic link and the hydro. Things like that on a big scale. The biggest one, the Premier and I had the pleasure of witnessing the signature of another Aboriginal government to sign on to devolution. Congratulations there, Mr. Premier. I don’t know how you did it, but you did it, and I don’t want to know how. I just want to say that to you.

That brings me to how we govern ourselves here with this. I look forward to the lands that are going to be under our jurisdiction. There’s a land use framework on how we use those types of tools that we have. The Crown lands are now going to be over to the territorial government. How are we going to work on those issues with our Aboriginal governments who are in settled and unsettled land claim issues? That’s going to be really challenging for the Cabinet. You need all of us to move on these type of issues here. I think that’s something that we need to be cognizant of.

My other comments are with the self-government negotiations. More specifically the one that’s close to signing in my region is the Deline self-government arrangements. I’ve talked to some of the Members and they’re pretty optimistic. They’re looking at maybe two years. I’m not too sure. I’m not involved in the day-to-day, face-to-face negotiations. All I get are briefings from the government here or when I go to Deline. They tell me about some of the stuff and they think they can come through that with some type of agreement. The Deline self-government negotiations are something that is an interest of mine, and I’m not too sure if I will be able to see or will see an LP, legislative proposal, to give the final sanction to that piece there. I know the other communities in my region are working on different levels of self-government, so we’ll continue working on that.

I wanted to also talk to the department here on Aboriginal governments on the duty to consult and accommodate when appropriate to the Aboriginal people and their treaty rights. Especially to the treaty rights. They’re very important. There are

different views of the treaty rights; however, when you go to the communities, the honour of the Crown is always at stake, and we have to be very careful when we go into areas that we may have to consult a little further and accommodate some of those issues here.

I think for myself those areas that I wanted to touch upon, the last one is the issue of – I’m not too sure if this is the department to talk about decentralization. We know devolution is being negotiated. They are looking at positions in the North. We just now have 95 percent completion of our budget for this year. I have with me some information from the research that I asked for and I looked at… Maybe I should talk about it with the Department of Finance, but I wanted the Premier to know through Executive, that when you look at the positions being added to the GNWT this year, there are 62 new full-time positions and 66 part-time positions being added to the GNWT’s budget. Of that, there are notes here I can share, that there’s 57 full-time and two part-time positions being added to Yellowknife, according to the numbers here. You can check them for yourself, but that’s about $7 million being added to the economy in Yellowknife. When you look at positions being added to the regions and the small communities, there’s five full-time and four part-time. That’s about $738,000. There’s a great disparity, a huge gap.

I’m going to ask probably the, I don’t know if it’s this Minister or the next Minister about decentralization, because right now it doesn’t look too good or favourable on our side. These positions are now pretty huge and they’re all being added to the Yellowknife economy, nothing in our community. I can’t wait for you to come out with a decentralization policy while this is happening. I’m awake here. I have to make sure that we get our fair share in the region, and get our fair share in the communities. I want to ask you: Is this what we mean by decentralization? It’s already happening. It’s right in the budget here. It’s black and white. The positions are coming to Yellowknife. There are 62 added to the budget, 57 of them added to Yellowknife, and two part-time. The regions and communities are getting five full-time and four part-time in the regional centres and small communities. I don’t like what I’m seeing right here. I’m not too sure how we can start working on this and I would really like to see a policy that stops this, that says this is not good. We need to look at next year’s budget, hopefully, and I’m not too sure how devolution will affect this. You have $7 million coming into Yellowknife. That’s $7 million into the economy. That’s just on salary. That’s an estimate. I’m not too sure if that’s a correct number. That’s a lot of money that’s not coming to our regions and small communities. All we’re doing is building up Yellowknife. Building, building, building up Yellowknife.

My time is up. I’m tired.