Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I want to thank you and Yvonne Jones, the parliamentary secretary, for coming to the Northwest Territories. You were very appreciated in your discussions in Yellowknife and Norman Wells.
I see that we have two challenges left as we move forward. First of all, there is the time. We only have 43 months, and less than that if you factor in an election in the last year, so by my calculation we probably only have 36 months. We also have to move past the old system of running the clock on negotiations and discussions.
I have four questions for you. My office is bombarded by requests to meet and to talk to people in your department, to you, and to Yvonne. Will you consider putting together an engagement strategy to start meeting with the aboriginal governments across Canada?
The second question is this. Is the settlement of land claims and self-government negotiation a priority for your department, and if it is, how are you going to do that? There are so many questions regarding settled land claims and the inability of dealing with the agreements that everybody thought were in place.
Fiscal harmonization is something that's new, something that wasn't part of the negotiations, but it was brought forward. How can you deal with that?
Also, I'm really curious as to how we're going to move forward on the Kelowna accord. That was something that was in the platform. Some pieces will need to be discussed, and I'm told by all the departments where we raised it that it's in this department's mandate. I'm really curious to see if we have a plan to do that.
Thank you.