Thanks, Mr. Chair. I would like to start off on the issue of the land rights negotiations. The Minister indicated that there is an additional $595,000 in this year's budget for it. That is likely a good thing, but this comes after two years of cuts within the department and its capacity to negotiate. It is good that we are trying to work towards that. I guess I'll have some questions about what that funding is really going to be used for.
The other thing I want to say about this is that there is a joint committee of Cabinet and Regular MLAs to talk about some of these issues, but it has never met twice. It didn't really have the kind of authority that the Premier committed to in his campaign speech to become the Premier. It doesn't provide any sort of oversight or real advice, as I understand it, in terms of those negotiations. We haven't seen much progress. There haven't been any completed agreements, and we are more than halfway through our term. I am very concerned about the lack of progress in this area. We need to set this as a much higher priority for this government.
I want to talk about government service officers. Regular MLAs on our side, we have tried to push, in the last two budgets, for some kind of a plan to complete the GSOs in all of our communities. Not all the small communities have GSOs yet. I don't believe there are any in the regional centres. There certainly aren't any in Yellowknife. There may be some opportunities for greater efficiencies, particularly in a place like Yellowknife where the federal government has sort of a one-stop shop. Perhaps we can be looking at partnering with them on that as well here in Yellowknife to get some efficiencies.
Without a plan, where is this going? It just seems that Cabinet throws a few dollars into this whenever it seems that it can afford it. I think we need a solid plan to know what the additional costs are to complete our network so we can improve our programs and services to our communities.
I have a place to find that, the money that the Minister wants to use to add extra capacity in the inter-governmental relations, as I termed it, the red alert office in Ottawa. That is where he can get that money. Let's talk a little bit about that office. It just sort of appears as a line item in the budget. There is not much detail in the business plan. Regular MLAs, including myself, have asked for a job description. We have asked for more details about what that position will actually do. The information we got back revolved largely around the red alert messaging that the Premier has talked about in this House, as well, about trying to overturn the offshore rights issuance moratorium.
I guess I had hoped to see much more of an emphasis on leveraging infrastructure funding for things like housing and renewable energy, rather than the large roads-to-resources projects that our government continues to submit. Maybe even an emphasis on the need to revise the territorial formula funding agreement so we can build more fiscal and economic sustainability here in the Northwest Territories, but that is not the information that we have got. I will have lots of questions for the Minister about that investment of money and whether it would be better spent on other initiatives.
There are some good things in here in terms of support for the friendship centres. I support that. The additional funding for the campaign schools to try to encourage women's participation in politics. Those are good initiatives. Ongoing funding for the Arctic Inspiration Prize; that is a good investment. Supporting the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk highway plan through the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation; that is good money spent as well, but there do not seem to be any rules around this funding. They all seem to be one-offs without any sort of policy framework. I think that just leaves the door open to anybody lining up at the Premier's office and asking for money, and I think we are starting to see that here.
I don't understand why the Tuktoyaktuk Community Corporation has to go to the Premier's office to get money when those funds could and should be available as part of Infrastructure and ITI's regular planning for a major infrastructure project. That is not to say that their proposal isn't good, but that should be part of our regular project planning, not subject to one-offs with the Premier's office. We need to have a policy framework for decision-making around that sort of funding.
I want to talk a little bit about Nutrition North, which is one of the mandate commitments. I am not aware of really what our government is doing on Nutrition North. There was a federal task force that was set up to investigate Nutrition North and its future, and I am not aware of whether our government even participated in that and what our position is and what we are trying to do on Nutrition North. There have been ideas from this side of the House about making sure that local agricultural producers can access or use or be supported through Nutrition North, as well.
Net metering is another responsibility of the Executive. It is in the mandate as well to try to improve access to net metering and make sure that citizens who invest in renewable resources have a way to feed energy back into the grid and realize some benefits from their investment, but there is nothing that has been done by the Executive on this. There is nothing in the New Energy Strategy around net metering, and there is no direction on this. This issue has been raised in the House, not just by myself but by other MLAs, and I would like to see some real progress on this in the context of the energy strategy.
I guess one other thing here that I would like to -- Northern Residents Tax Deduction. That is in the mandate commitments that falls under the Executive, as well, although the Minister of Finance obviously has some responsibility here. We did make some progress on getting it improved. It needs to be indexed, and I don't know why we cannot work with the other Finance Ministers in the other jurisdictions that are Nunavut and Yukon and put a lot more pressure on the Minister responsible for the Canada Revenue Agency to get this indexed.
Lastly, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. There is some progress being made on implementation of this at the federal level. There is a private Member's bill that is going to come forward that is going to require a more systematic approach to federal legislations and policy, and I think that the ruling party has indicated they are prepared to support that initiative. That is something that our government needs to look at in terms of our legislation and policies to make sure that they incorporate things like free, prior, and informed consent, which is part of the declaration itself.
Just checking my notes here, I think those are the main things that I wanted to cover. Sorry, lack of progress on ombudsman legislation. I am not sure where that stands at. This is a commitment in the mandate again, and here we are more than two years into our mandate, and it still has not come forward. I am concerned about the progress on that initiative as well. Thanks, Mr. Chair. That is all I have on this department for now.