Thank you. In your opening remarks, you wrote the Northwest Territories Development Corporation provides financing to community investments. In the Northwest Territories, the corporation is mandated to provide investment and ongoing support for ventures in small communities where the prospects of profitability may be weak, but benefits for employment creation are high. Continued efforts will be directed towards providing assistance and strengthening management and production capacity at the community level and developing markets and the products to satisfy the needs for those markets.

That is what you wrote in here.

You mentioned getting into business ventures and what not. What is the policy of the Development Corporation when it comes to joint ventures with the community organizations in getting into small business?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will make my comments brief and questions to the point.

Can I ask the Minister what the mandate of the Northwest Territories Development Corporation is? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize a couple of friends of mine who are not in the gallery, but they are in Yellowknife in the hospital. Mrs. Elizabeth Drew, who is not doing very well, from Fort Resolution. I wish her a speedy recovery. Also, Mr. Pete Fraser, who is always watching us in this House and knows exactly what is going on. I would also like to wish him a speedy recovery. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

-- Applause

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will make my comments short so Mr. Handley can call detail again. I will address the opening remarks by Mr. Handley in the areas of priorities set by this government. I believe our budget reflects some of it but our budget really reflects the fiscal reality that we live in today. It would have been nice to see a real, good budget, but not having the money does not allow us to do that. In terms of building partnerships and development capacity, the support for these building capacities and partnerships are important, I believe. I believe it is incumbent upon all of us individual MLAs to work with our communities in getting prepared for the future. The document, The Strategy For Non-Renewable Resource Development, I went through it very carefully, and I think it is a very good document. I shared that document with people in the resource development sector. The responses that I got were very positive. I know the intention of that document, if it goes through, and we start seeing the financial gains from the development of our non-renewable resource sector, is to use those funds to help pay for the diversified Northwest Territories economy as we speak. That may be a few years away, but I do not think we can sit back and wait for that to happen.

We need to work with the regions, the communities, the leaderships, at all levels of government throughout the Northwest Territories and help to prepare our communities so that once we are able to develop a pipeline and get more into the mining sector, that when we start seeing money that they are prepared to take advantage of those revenues, as groups of peoples who are independent and arms-length from government. I do not see the funds available in the budget for that kind of support. I am hoping that the Minister and the deputy minister will be able to find some funds in order to assist communities and regions in preparing and building capacity within the regions. I am personally going to work with my communities doing just that; looking at, for example, tourism associations for my region. I may include some other communities outside of my region, but we are going to need help. We are going to need resources to set up the people, the offices, and what we are going to do, et cetera. Not only that, there will be areas to work with resources companies in partnership with community and government, to set up offices where people could go and apply for employment or business opportunities, et cetera. But we need financial resources to get those going.

The communities and local aboriginal governments just do not have the cash. Resource companies have the cash but they like to see in-kind services, basically, from other partners. I will do my part in achieving the goals that we set for ourselves for a better tomorrow. I think those are good achievable goals that the people of the Northwest Territories will support. However, having said that, we need to build towards it, not wait until we get there before we start building. We need to build starting today. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am standing up in support of this motion. My honourable colleague from Weledeh had mentioned partnerships, or aboriginal partners having a say in it. I dare say the establishment of such a Public Service Commission and the establishment of a mandate of such a commission could work with partnerships, in partnerships with aboriginal organizations.

We talked about money. It might cost money, but if the aboriginal content and the management sector of this government goes up by only six percent in nine years, then only by eight people in five years, I have a problem with it.

One of the biggest complaints I get as a Member of this Legislature and also as a private member of the community before my election, by people and organizations who are aboriginal governments today, is that the Government of the NWT does not represent the people of the Northwest Territories. The number of aboriginal people within the government is too low. The duplication of responsibilities is too high. The cost of government is too high, et cetera. If this commission could alleviate some of those problems, get more input from aboriginal governments and reduce the number of duplications, I think the aboriginal governments would accept this government a lot more than they are accepting it today.

By putting it on the shelf, saying, "Well, let us talk about it some more," and what not, I think it has been talked about since 1976. I think that is enough talking. Let us walk the talk. Thank you

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am aware of programs, like the one at the corrections division that Justice has, that are used to develop aboriginal managers. They are using mentoring programs and such. It has proven successful.

However, Mr. Speaker, I can think of few other examples of the same skill or magnitude. In light of what our Premier has just suggested, that we take up to the fall to really have a good look at it, and when I see a total of nearly $1 million has lapsed in the last three years under public service career training...I would like to ask the Premier if he can tell this Assembly whether this government intends to ensure that the available funding, the lapsed funding, that is, is used in the interim to develop aboriginal people in management? Thank you.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think this line of questioning may be starting to sound like we are beating on a dead dog...

-- Interjection

-- Laughter

...but this is a very important issue to my constituents, who are mostly aboriginal people.

Mr. Speaker, the government has increased aboriginal participation in management from eight percent to a meagre 14 percent over the last nine years. However, I suggest to my colleagues that the majority have more to do with the downsizing of the public service rather than any positive action or policy on the part of previous governments.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, in the past five years, the actual number of aboriginal people in management has increased by eight people as of December 1999. My question is for the Premier. Can the Premier inform this Assembly what steps this government will take to increase the numbers of aboriginal people in management positions? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I think it is time the Government of the Northwest Territories had a close-up look at itself. This government expects industry to maintain a workforce with a high percentage of Northerners and aboriginal people through their socio-economic agreements. Yet the Northwest Territories government itself is lagging far behind the private sector in this regard.

When BHP Diamonds signed its socio-economic agreement, this government required it maintain a target of 62 percent Northerners during its operations phase. BHP has exceeded this and it is at 79 percent. Of those Northerners, 32 percent are aboriginal people.

Aurora College similarly has had many aboriginal graduates of management studies in the past years. This year alone they had 20 graduates in the diploma program at three campuses. Eleven of those were aboriginal, Mr. Speaker.

I wonder if any of these graduates are unemployed or working for the territorial government?

I find it hypocritical that the government can force other organizations to hire northern and aboriginal, yet the government is not even doing the same thing.

It seems to me the government does not make it a priority for itself, Mr. Speaker. Nor does it invest the time to train northern aboriginal people already working for the government so that they can advance to higher positions.

What you have, Mr. Speaker, is a situation where many qualified northern aboriginal people are either under-utilized or not utilized at all. I will be asking the Minister responsible several questions related to this issue during question period. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

-- Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I can get quite a bit of suggestions from my esteemed colleagues on this side over here for a line of questioning. The time that my constituency has to wait, however long that is, would there be any financial compensation for those individuals that have to drive all the way to Yellowknife, 1350 kilometres on rough roads, or those who have to walk a hundred miles from Fort Resolution? Is the Minister of Finance planning to introduce a dental usage tax or something? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

-- Interjection