Mr. Chairman, it is the same issue, but it relates to how this is going to be perceived by the public that is going to be asked to vote. The government will not be seen as being fair and even-handed if money is going to be given to one group to promote -- although it is called consultation, the public sees it as a promotional campaign rather than just a simple matter of giving people information -- a vote. It would not seem to be even-handed if the government is obviously putting itself in the position of supporting a group of people to do something which is denied to another group of people.
I understand the Minister's response when he says in the West there could be as much as five million dollars spent over the next three years in developing a constitution for what is left over when division takes place. I would have thought that with division, the priority -- because things are so much further advanced than in the East, people have their act together and they know where they are going -- would be for the constitutional development of the East. They may get division. They will have a claim, and so on, but the actual constitution itself -- if that is the issue -- would seem to be a greater priority in the East than it is in the West because they are the ones that have the claim and it is very, very clear cut. Everybody understands it.
My major concern is that, as somebody who has followed this debate since 1965 -- and I am talking about the old-timers that have been around for so long and watched this and are probably sick and tired of it by now -- when they see the map on May 4th -- the people who have not watched every little move that has taken place -- a lot of the old-timers will say that in 1965, when we wanted to divide and the West wanted to go its own way to become a territory and eventually a province, the line which was in the federal act in Ottawa was a line that went straight up, a line of longitude. This line that they have worked out makes the West just tiny compared to what it would have been had that act passed in 1965. That is the response you are going to get from a lot of the oldtimers. Really, what we thought would be a territory that could eventually become self-sustaining, is really much reduced. I have not worked out the exact difference in the size it would be now compared to what it would have been then, but there is a substantial difference in the way the land will be divided.
Since the government is putting itself in the position of being seen to promote a particular line -- this is the way it will be perceived -- without the people in the West having a similar kind of privilege, my guess is that it will have a negative impact in the West if you are seen to be not even-handed and being fair and so on in the way you deal with it. This is being perceived as a promotional campaign by this
government rather than the simple question that the people are being asked to vote on. That is the perception that this government is going to have to live with after May 4th if it is still perceived that our government is putting itself in the position of promoting a yes vote on this line.
I would like to follow up on a question I asked yesterday about the actual position of the government and whether Ministers are going to have to take a particular position on this. I am not drifting too far away from the item, Mr. Chairman, because I think it is relevant to the whole business of how we deal with this question. There is only one item in the budget that deals with the cost of this plebiscite in addition to the amount that is in the Legislative Assembly budget.
I would like to ask the Government Leader the code of behaviour. How is the government going to be perceived as being even-handed? Are you going to have a unified position as a cabinet on how this is going to be approached? Are Ministers going to be allowed to promote a yes or no vote if they feel so inclined? Is there going to be a position of the government that you are going to try to carry forward? It is very important for us to know exactly how this is going to be handled by each of the Members of this Assembly because it is very, very close. This is the kind of item that affects public opinion.
