Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all, I will never criticize those who choose to take a different path. That's their choice and if they go along that path and find that they get a better deal, then, as I say, you know, good luck to them; I hope they can do it. Mr. Speaker, on the other hand, the arrangements, the agreement-in-principle we've signed with the three land claim groups and the Metis is one that is open and, at times, if people want to join on, they can join on and sign up too, if they choose to go that path.

Mr. Speaker, I'm going to continue working with those who have signed the deal on the basis of the deal, the agreement-in-principle we signed. I have already forwarded it to Minister Prentice. He wanted time to have a look at it and consider it. The next step, in my view, is to try to get a meeting between those leaders who have signed on and myself, a joint meeting with Minister Prentice and plan out the path to follow from here. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Prentice has indicated that he is sharing this with the federal negotiator, so I think it is moving a big step forward. Mr. Speaker, I got calls today, as well, from the leaders, expressing concern and saying, look, we've got to keep on moving here, we're on this, it's a good deal and let's move forward, not stall.

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Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For sure, I cannot speak for Grand Chief Herb Norwegian. I mean, I'm not 100 percent clear what the deal would be that he would find acceptable. Mr. Speaker, I can say that whenever we come to an agreement like this, there will always be people who feel that a better deal could have been gotten if we had done something differently. That's always the case. My view is that this is a good deal. If it goes through from current agreement-in-principle status to final agreement, then I think this is a deal that gives us a lot more than what we'd get today, for sure. Is it the best deal that's possible? Is it possible to get a better deal? Possibly. I don't know. But all of us know that at some point we have to make a decision and move forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'm assuming the Member is referring to negotiations on an agreement-in-principle about the bigger issues or on land use and so on. But, Mr. Speaker, no, I don't have anything specific to report. There was a briefing provided to the Akaitcho people last week, the Akaitcho leaders. The chiefs there, again, the same as with Dehcho, have taken a position that they would like to negotiate their own deal; they feel they can do better on their own. Certainly there is nothing that our government is doing to try to frustrate that. If they feel they can do better on their own, then I wish them well in doing that. At the same time,

some of us have chosen the path of working as a team together. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The short answer is no, this does not affect it at all. The four aboriginal organizations, governments, and our government have signed the deal and I think it sends a strong signal to Ottawa that if we work in solidarity on our positions and we want a share of those resource revenues as soon as possible. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair. A lot of the recommendations come from the coalition itself. The government is one member on that coalition. There are the groups I mentioned before. What they are trying to do is get a balance between the support for salaries and so on for our front-line workers and training of workers. Just to put more money into workers and not giving the training that is necessary may not be the best arrangement either. So it has to be a balance. The idea of collecting the baseline data came largely from the coalition. They want to know whether or not what they are doing is changing and having an impact on attitudes toward violence, for example, and a number of other areas where what kind of public education programs or campaigns would be most effective. A lot of it comes from the coalition itself. We respect what they are saying. We know that they are experienced people. They are the ones who can give us advice. A lot of it is their advice to us. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a Framework for Action on family violence. It includes women; it includes children; it includes men. It's family violence. We're not putting a priority on one or the other. We're looking at all aspects. Now, when the front-line workers want baseline data, I'm sure it's going to include that discussion; who's going to be surveyed, what kind of baseline data do we need and so on. But it is family violence, not against any one sector. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again I want to remind Members that we have, we're doing this in partnership with the Coalition Against Family Violence. Those are the people who are the front-line workers. Those are the people who are facing the issues every day. Those are the people, you know, the family support centre in Hay River, the Tuk women's and children's shelter, the Inuvik Transition House, the Alison McAteer House, Sutherland House in Fort Smith, the Centre for Northern Families, the Status of Women Council, these are front-line workers. I think it's probably frustrating for them, they know the business, they know what they need. They're asking for it. They're saying we need baseline data. They're saying we need to look at programs for children who witness abuse. We need to get together and improve our training on shelter workers. These are the kind of things they want us to do. Now for us to start second guessing what they need I think is probably a bit demoralizing for them. So I have to support them and say, look, they are working along with the NGOs, many of them very poorly paid, and we're taking a lot of direction from them. But we need to have the resources to be able to back up the work that was done. This is phase two of a report that came out a good probably two or three years ago since we first did this. So, Madam Chair, I don't want to guess at what they need for baseline data. I'll take their front-line experience and say let's build with them. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I don't get to all of the coalition and government meetings. Again, there have been a number of meetings. They have, in the Framework for Action - Phase II, there is a whole list of actions in there that have been laid out. The consensus among all the partnership is that this is an opportunity to bring in one caregiver from each community and experts both from the North and from the South. The culmination of those people to take a look at the actions that are identified and determine what is the best way of being able to put those in place. So it's a conference, but it's not just a conference to blue sky about what we might do, but it's more a conference of how we go about

implementing the framework in a way that is going to be most meaningful to the communities. Of course, as well, there is also work that has to be done on the survey and collection of baseline data. What kind of data do we want? Make sure that this doesn't just fit the experts' ideas of what it should be, but also the caregivers from the communities. So it's a combination of both coming together. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to mention first that we work along with a lot of other partnerships like with NGOs and so on. So it's not always our decision or direction in terms of what will happen.

The people on the Coalition Against Family Violence feel quite strongly about the conference. They feel a need to build that awareness and at the same time do some training. The conference will accommodate 120 participants from across the North. It's broken down into four sessions. Each session focuses on one action that has impacts in communities. They will use some expertise, as well as facilitators in the groups, and will use this information and the consensus that they achieve in order to help them to develop better programming, better intervention techniques and a better focus. Thank you.