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Arctic Yearbook 2014
‘superboard’. With fewer local members, the superboard potentially implied diminished
aboriginal powers. Unaware that this proposal would be bundled with devolution until the bill
was read in Parliament in January, most of the NWT’s aboriginal governments were incensed by
what they saw as Ottawa’s last-minute and unilateral move.
Ottawa responded coolly, claiming simply to be acting on a long-standing recommendation to
rationalise the NWT’s regulatory system. For its part, the GNWT disavowed the superboard but perhaps tellingly it also disavowed responsibility for informing its aboriginal partners that
Ottawa would link the