Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the Member for meeting with the students and also Members as well. We are here as elected MLAs, elected officials. We represent the students as well. We have a Board of Governors, one from each region, that are responsible for their committee, for their regions and they represent the students. So it is not only the students that represents at the Board of Governors level, but all the board members.

This is an area that we are closely monitoring, and having the student representatives has been grateful for the Board of Governors. We will continue to push that forward for those students and I will continue to drive that forward. Mahsi.

Clearly, the question was missed, so I will reword it.

I did not hear one element that demonstrates how these Board of Governors are representing the students in an accessible and certainly in a transparent, accountable way.

In the same vein, will the Minister use his authority under Section 7 of the Aurora College Act, and instruct the college to get these Board of Governors’ e-mail addresses so the students can contact them, and furthermore, would he instruct the Board of Governors to meet with these students as a board to hear their concerns?

I heard three questions in there, so I will answer one of them. My department is listening carefully and taking notes as well.

We have a Board of Governors representing the students. We have a student representative on there as well. Most of the organizations do not provide personal e-mails, but I will be addressing that with the president and Board of Governor chair. If we can allow board members to have their e-mail address and phone number on the website, then we can make that accessible for the general public of the Northwest Territories. I am making a commitment to address that with the board chair. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

There is no student rep on this Board of Governors. I’ve gone to other websites of other universities and other colleges, and they all have an accessible porthole on how to get a hold of the Board of Governors. It may not be a direct e-mail but it’s one that goes to them. Why in this day and age, don’t we have this?

I will ask this question: How does the Minister define accountability and accessibility to their students, because I have yet to hear it today.

We have a Board of Governors that have their meetings in our colleges, in our communities. They are accessible to the students, to the general public. We have an open forum, we have an open dialogue when there is a Board of Governors meeting. There is one coming up in Inuvik in June. It is opened up to Inuvik to residents and students at Inuvik campus. There are meetings in Fort Smith; there are meetings in Yellowknife. Those are accessible to students and the general public. We will continue to open doors to those students.

We’ve been having a very successful student representative on our board, so we are continuing to push that forward. We may not have one at the present time, but we will be appointing one. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Mr. Speaker, defining accessibility by bumping into your Board of Governors representative at the Northern in Inuvik is not accountability. Going to the Co-op in Yellowknife and bumping into your Board of Governors rep is not accountability, and certainly going to the hardware store in Fort Smith is not defined as accountability.

Will the Minister, under Section 7 of the Aurora College Act, use his authority and direct the college to meet with these students at least once a term so people can hear directly their issues and they can understand them, because right now I’ve heard zero today about accountability and certainly accessibility. So, Mr. Speaker, that’s what the Minister could do and he could show he’s in charge. Thank you.

I laid out plenty of accountability that we deal with as the Board of Governors and with my Department of Education, Culture and Employment. We continue to strengthen that into the communities and into the regions. Under accountability of the Board of Governors, again, we have representatives from each region that represents these students, that represents the general public, the regions, the communities. As a department, I work closely with the board chair to make them accountable to the general public and to the students. I have laid out what I have committed already. I will be addressing with the board chair how we can resolve some of the areas of communication with the students. We have had student representatives there for the last several years and we will continue to do that. I will be committing to meet with the board chairs. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am pleased to report that the Senior Officials Working Group that we set up with the Dehcho First Nations that have been meeting for almost a year now have been working very well to resolve outstanding land issues between the Dehcho First Nations and the Government of the Northwest Territories. I think we’ve reached a point now where both the Dehcho First Nations and the Government of the Northwest Territories have taken what has been worked with to their respective authorities to seek approval. The Dehcho First Nations have indicated that they will be going on the road to their communities to consult with their leadership in various communities.

Our government have been running it through our process. We have not run into what we call showstoppers, and I expect that very soon it will come forward so that we can make a decision on whether there’s enough progress. The grand chief has said if we make progress in this area, they’ll sign on to devolution. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It’s very encouraging and I applaud the Premier for his leadership in ensuring that the outstanding regions that haven’t signed on to devolution are at a possible precipice to sign on to the Devolution Agreement.

My question is: In advancing these talks, the Premier is leading those discussions and working with the First Nations governments. How is the Premier ensuring that trust is maintained at the same time progress is made? Thank you.

At the outset, the grand chief and myself signed an agreed upon terms of reference for the Senior Officials Working Group. We provide oversight and we meet on a regular basis, whether it’s by a telephone call or by a meeting for lunch or a meeting, and we’ve been able to ensure we keep making progress. When we hit bumps in the road, we get together and we work

things out so that we can keep working in the right direction. Thank you.

It’s been indicated, of course, the deadline for devolution is April 1st . So I want to ask

the Premier, is it possible that within that time frame that outstanding regions, including the Deh Cho, would come to the table and sign off? Yes or no. Mahsi.

I think our objective has been clear from day one that we want 100 percent of the Aboriginal governments to sign on to devolution. We have also pushed the federal government to get the federal representatives appointed to the Land Use Committee and other committees because we feel that will help advance the process.

The time frame that once devolution comes into effect is one year for the federal liabilities, as they call it. They don’t want to continue to carry on federal liabilities for more than a year. So those resources that the federal government has made to other Aboriginal governments, there’s a one-year period to sign on and if they don’t sign on before the one-year period, then those financial resources disappear. But in our view, we want 100 percent Aboriginal governments signing on. So, even if it takes more than a year, we’d be prepared to welcome them when they do decide to sign on. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Nadli.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. These discussions that have been taking place, it seems that perhaps the next logical step that the Premier is more likely to develop or advance towards is the first inaugural meeting of the governance council. Is this the purpose of those talks, ensuring that at least the foundation, the rudimentary structure of the governance council has been laid and that a first meeting could happen perhaps within a year of April 1, 2014? Mahsi.

Thank you. As a function of devolution, we will be required to have a sign-off on the Intergovernmental Council probably within this month. I think all of the Aboriginal governments that have signed on have agreed to sign off on the Intergovernmental Council and that will be put into legislation. As part of that aspect there will be a process for other Aboriginal governments that can sign on after this first instance. Thank you.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to return to some of my questions earlier today regarding the power outage that we had on

December 29th of 2013. Unfortunately, I didn’t have

the purview of looking at Hansard, so I’ll get those tomorrow. I find that earlier today I was rather at the Minister’s mercy and convenience to some of the quasi attempts and answers that we didn’t get, but I wanted to further some questioning regarding the initial incident when the initial power failure occurred.

Was there any failure of equipment, automatic failure of equipment for generators to start us? Was there any feeder failure that caused a cascade of events as the Minister alluded to earlier? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister responsible for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation, Mr. Miltenberger.

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Okay, so now we’re getting somewhere. We did have some feeder problems. If we agree that we did have some issues regarding the system failures, can the Minister elaborate how many other system failures occurred during the three-hour outage? Thank you.