Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 11/99) - The Western NWT Aboriginal Summit is calling for more intensive public consultation on a bill proposing to add five seats to the territorial legislature.

The government has announced it will hold public hearings on Bill 15 in six major centres around the NWT, but summit members said that's simply not enough.

"This is the single most important piece of legislation this assembly will ever have before it," said Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus. "We're glad MLAs plan to consult on it, but we think they should be talking to people in more communities, not just the urban areas."

The government announced Wednesday that the Government Operations Committee will officially open consultation on the bill at the legislature June 14.

The committee will travel to Inuvik, Rae-Edzo, Fort Simpson, and return to Yellowknife for public hearings June 23 and 24.

Meetings will then be held in Fort Smith and Hay River.

Metis Nation-NWT president Gary Bohnet backed up Erasmus' call for more far-reaching consultation.

"It will be hard for people from the more remote areas, especially elders and other people who don't speak English well to come to the hearings and get their views across," he said. "The hearings have a built-in bias."

The Aboriginal Summit acted as intervenor in the electoral boundary case this spring in which the territorial supreme court ruled in favour of Yellowknife's Friends of Democracy -- that the territory's urban centres are under-represented -- and ordered the government to work out a solution by Sept. 1.

The summit has argued all along that the court ruling fails to take into account Aboriginal rights, and it is scheduled to begin an appeal process next week.

The summit also said it was concerned that certain MLAs have voiced their disproval of the consultation process and vowed not to participate beyond their own ridings.

"Why aren't these MLAs willing to listen to people outside their own constituencies?" said Akaitcho Grand Chief Felix Lockhart.

Yellowknife Centre MLA Jake Ootes and Hay River MLA Jane Groenewegen had questioned the need for further consultation at this time.

They argued that consultations have been done recently, that the expense is not acceptable at a time when more money is being sought for areas like education and that MLAs are capable of consulting with their own constituents and bringing their opinions to the assembly.

"I don't know if I'm opposed or if I just won't participate," Ootes said recently. "I think we've spent an awful lot of time with the constitutional working group and consultations -- we had the boundary commission and did community consultation, and those reports are still there to be read."