Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I’ll thank the Member for the question. I just want to point out that friendship centres provide a very important service to the communities, and the friendship centre movement I believe is a very unifying force in the communities. Having said that, the friendship centres are core funded by the federal government and the Government of the Northwest Territories is not privy to those fiscal arrangements.
I do know that the federal government has been looking at a broad range of fiscal arrangements with Indigenous organizations and this may include friendship centres. Our understanding from the friendship centres is that they have a concern over possible funding reductions, and just recently you’ve been made aware that they’ve reached an agreement but there are delays in the flow of funding. When we met in May, a request for core funding was not made. The only request that was made was to establish a process whereby we could work with them so that they could fundraise on a more effective basis.