Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to speak on those parts of the report which deal with orders of government and the concept of district governments. The whole concept of orders and districts can be summarized in the first recommendation which appears on page 25 of the report. That recommendation reads,
"The commission recommends that the new western territory constitution affirm that all authority to government belongs to the people, collectively and flows collectively to the people collective and flows collectively from them to their institutions of government."
At first glance that may seem like something which is common sense and straightforward. However, if you look at that recommendation in the context of the theory on which this government and this House is established you will see that this is an extremely revolutionary concept. It is revolutionary because the theory on which this government and this House is founded originates some three, four, maybe five hundred years ago when at some point in time the British Crown is supposed to have taken complete sovereignty over all the lands we now occupy. That is the origin on which your government is created and the notion then is that by whatever means the British Crown achieved this authority, it achieved all authority and it is only from the British Crown that our modern day governments get any authority. The flow of that authority began supposedly in 1867 with the British North America Act. When notionally, Queen Victoria said, "All right, you people who are living in Canada, I am going to give you some authority to govern yourselves, and my authority which I give to you, I am going to divide between two types of government, one called the federal government and the other called provincial governments." That authority will be divided in what we now know today as sections 91 and 92 of the British North America Act.
There is no provision made in that act for territorial governments having any authority. As a result of that, those parts of Canada that were not provinces, remained completely under the jurisdiction of the federal government. The federal government decided to give some authority to territorial governments. In our case, that has been done through the Northwest Territories Act, which is an act of the federal government that gives legitimacy to this government and this House. Acting under the authority of the Northwest Territories Act this government and this House then passes acts, such as the Cities, Towns and Villages Act, which gives community governments some authority. Finally, at the bottom of the heap comes the people. In other words, all authority comes from the Crown to the federal government to the Government of the Northwest Territories to the municipal governments and finally we get down to the people.
In the transcripts of our hearings Mr. Bourque introduced to you, there is a list of all of the individuals who appeared in front of us. There is a list of all of the written submissions that were made to us. By and large, the message from the people was that this theory is not correct. The power belongs to the people and flows from them to their institutions of government. What we were told to do, was to take the existing theory of government and turn it on its head, the people would then come from the bottom to the top, and the Crown goes to the bottom. It is not going to be an easy thing to do in light of the history that is behind us. That is the will of the people as was expressed to us in the hearings.
In addition to hearing from the public, as a commission we also initiated a large legal study of our constitutional situation. It is included in this report. It is called "mapping the legal landscape for a constitution for the new western territory." What we had to do, as a commission, was to try and reconcile the wishes of the people of the new western territory with the legal constraints we find ourselves under today, and bringing those two streams together is the recommendation that we have made in our report. To give effect to the view that power flows from the people, we have recommended creation of orders of government and districts of government so that power rests as closely as possible to the people. The advice which we have received is that this is legally possible notwithstanding the current theory under which government is structured.
The report goes on in some detail to recommend how this might be done and suggests possible lists of districts. However, the most important part is the concept of power belonging to people and flowing from them to their institutions of government. If that is accepted, then the whole process that should have taken place 125 years ago may be finally initiated here. Thank you.
---Applause