Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was very pleased to hear the opening remarks by the Premier, the Minister of this department. I’d like to first of all say congratulations, because we now have government service officers in our communities, and I’ve been hearing some very good reports back from people in the Sahtu, and I’m very pleased to see that Fort McPherson, Deline and Behchoko will be getting these government service officers. It’s a good thing for us

and it’s a good thing that the Department of Executive is listening to the small communities. With our unique challenges and our languages, it makes a lot of good for our older people who are in need of this office. Specifically, from the lady, the person, the officer in Fort Good Hope, she was saying that she really loves her job and she loves helping people. I just wanted to say thank you to the Executive for listening and doing this for our people. This is a good legacy to leave in our communities.

I wanted to also talk about the Status of Women’s position and the moving to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. I know the Premier has been working closely with this position. One of my concerns is the Northwest Territories’ position and stance on the Aboriginal missing women’s action that has been happening across Canada where we had some also here in the Northwest Territories. I’m not too sure what type of action plans we’re doing to help this great issue with our Aboriginal women who have gone missing, and helping our women. There are some in my region that also fit in this category. What type of support we are giving to the families as to the missing women in Canada and also in the Northwest Territories?

I believe, some time ago, the Premier did mention something, but I don’t know quite what was said and maybe we could be reminded. I think the Premier did support the initiatives on that. I’m not too sure, as a government, what type of things we’re doing for some of the families here in the Northwest Territories for Aboriginal women that are missing. Some of them haven’t yet found out what exactly happened, so I wanted to say that.

In my closing remarks, I want to ask the Premier, and I’ve already had some discussion with the Department of Transportation, so I’m going to use every opportunity to raise the issue of decentralization in small communities, and of course, I am talking about the Department of Transportation looking at when there could be some serious discussions about decentralizing. The activity in the Sahtu is getting quite busy, even to look at six months or something that would see more of the presence of Transportation into the Sahtu for decision-making in real time and support there.

I think we need to now move away from the old thinking of doing business. I remember the Premier talking one time about the Sahtu now wanting to have a stand-alone region and how we can now with devolution and how we evolve, as he calls it devolution and evolving. The territory is changing and evolving. The Sahtu is coming to a place where we want to have our own stand-alone region. We have other government departments that have decentralized into the Sahtu; still, we don’t have the full package yet. I would like to see that. That would

be the Sahtu devolution. We’re having a community vote in Deline where they’re actually going to propose their own community self-government, so we are evolving and things are changing.

I would like to know that this discussion could be had and opening, within the life of this government, we could start seeing some movement where we could see decentralization. I would like to start seeing that. Sahtu can be recognized as a stand-alone region in this government. We still have the old system where we are somewhat still part of the Inuvik region or the Simpson region. You know how geographically it’s made out in the books here and that has to change, just like we’re going through changes with Ottawa and devolution. Those things are changing. We’re no different. We want the same type of opportunity to have that discussion.

I wanted to, lastly, congratulate the devolution team and the Members, Premier. There’s a lot of hard work and lots of opportunities, lots of challenges for us, but it’s good that we’re moving to this next phase of our Northwest Territories. I guess the last sort of ticket to this devolution, while it would be in the future, will be a constitutional reform discussion coming to a full partner with the rest of the Confederation of Canada. There are many unique approaches to that. It doesn’t have to be the old conventional type of… It could be a very unique type of constitutional discussion, but that’s later down the line. I’m prepared to have those types of discussions. I think that’s where we need to be. That’s it for my opening comments. Thank you.