But, again, at the end of the day, I think that we in the north, and especially we in the western Arctic, are a pretty small population. We have tremendous social problems and challenges facing us. We are going to have to find some mechanisms in order to work together. I think that even during post-division, it is very important that very close ties remain between Nunavut and the new western territory.

As a corollary to that observation, I, too, would like to talk a little about the concept of devolution. I will bring to it a slightly different approach than my colleague, Mr. Koe. I'm the first to acknowledge that some of the transfers from the federal government perhaps weren't the best deals we could have got. It is always wise to be prudent in these endeavours. On the other hand, there is another reality. The federal scene has changed so rapidly in Ottawa that if we had maintained the status quo, the federal government would have cut back. They are cutting back across the country, so it is a double-edged sword.

It is great to say that we shouldn't have done it, but that only works if we assume that the status quo at the federal level is going to be maintained. And the status quo won't be maintained. For the last number of years, every year they have been cutting, cutting and cutting. They are cutting programs.

I, for one, think that, although we made some mistakes in the past, the basic philosophy of trying to get as many programs devolved from the federal government to the territorial government was and is the correct approach. I think today it is even more important than it has ever been. Again, I will agree with Mr. Koe that we should be prudent. But, if we wait and if we don't devolve these programs very soon, I will guarantee that two, three or four years from now, there will be nothing left to devolve. The federal government is cutting their programs right, left and centre.

I think it is really important that we move ahead with the devolution of transportation, the devolution of prosecutions, and the devolution of oil, gas and minerals. I think it is very important that this government takes over as many federal programs as it can. I also think it's important for those groups, especially in the western Arctic, who have opposed devolution to look at it in a different way.

What I am proposing and what the government is proposing is that the present territorial government -- which over the next five or six years is going to change dramatically because of self-government and because of the negotiations that are going on, to protect all of the groups active in the north and the western Arctic -- should bring those programs to the present territorial government in a holding pattern, not take away the rights from any of the groups at the end of the day, depending on what arrangement we make with each other or we make with the federal government on how those resources ultimately are divvied up. I don't think it's anybody's right at this time to pre-think what those negotiations, what our self-government or what our western constitutional negotiations, are going to bring.

I think it's really important that we protect the existing pie, so no matter how, at the end of the day, that pie is cut up, there's something in the pie. My theory is that if we don't repatriate these programs to the Northwest Territories, at the end of the day, when everyone might be happy with the arrangements that we have worked out, there's really nothing left to divvy up because the federal government has slashed all their programs.

So that's the context in which I am looking at devolution. I don't see it as a plot to ensure that the status quo is maintained because whether or not we have four or five more programs here in the Northwest Territories, it's not going to change the reality of the self-government negotiations. It won't matter. If we have five more, it doesn't mean that the status quo, I think, is more likely to carry on. What it means is we'll have protected some resources for all northerners, and then we can decide in our own time how these resources are going to be distributed.

So I think it's very important that all of us, when we are making decisions on constitutional development and political evolution in the Northwest Territories, make them in the context of an ever-shrinking federal pot of money. That is going to be, I am absolutely convinced, dramatically shown to us in the next couple of years. I think there are going to be dramatic cuts at the federal level.

On this particular budget that we will be looking at soon, in the next few days, I think the budget was an improvement over the process we had in the past to do capital budgets. I have heard Members say that the communities have been brought much more meaningfully into the process, and I think the government and the Finance Minister deserve credit for those improvements that have been made to the system. I think we have a better product out of the system.

The Standing Committee on Finance this year, because of the fact that when the Minister of Finance made his comments about his budget -- it's impossible to limit those comments, obviously, just to the capital side of our fiscal policy, but it has to look at the overall impact of what's happening financially to the government, and the Finance committee likewise found it impossible to limit our comments to just the capital budget, but again, the linkages between the capital and O and M budgets are key and critical and we can't really talk about one without the other -- tried to provide a broad overview of the standing committee's feelings about the government approach.

We thought that most of the smaller capital details would leave to individual Members to deal with on a Minister-by-Minister basis in the House, and our general comments, I thought, were quite reasonable.

We recognize the difficulty that -- with all the Finance Minister's best efforts to achieve a balanced budget this year -- as happens, things out of the control of the government have impacted on the cash flow of this government. It's going to be difficult, but the committee remains very firm in their resolve that in the long term, it's very, very important that the government stays out of an accumulated debt. The government's not able to do that this year. We would like to see steps taken by the government to ensure that, at least before division, this government has no accumulated debt, therefore, the two new territories can start off without a debt load. We suggested the mechanism of legislation that would compel the government by 1998 to have no accumulated debt, and it's something we hope that this government takes seriously.

When I was Finance Minister, I accused the standing committee, of which Mr. Pollard was chairman, of making a number of recommendations that added to the deficit and at the same time giving me a hard time about having one. We recognize that by us making recommendations we could be accused of that, so we were quite prudent in the recommendations that we made.

The one recommendation about a school-based social system is one that's been tried in other jurisdictions and it's proven not to be very costly. It uses existing resources. The other two concepts, the concept of early intervention to do with special needs students and the concept using Mr. Kakfwi's initiative of zero tolerance to violence, are both concepts that we think are real investments in the future. If you don't make some investments now, in youth especially, the downside ten years from now will be that the cost to this government will be horrendous.

The committee talked a lot about these particular recommendations that we made. We take these recommendations very seriously. We think that we have made recommendations that generally fit within the government's philosophical framework. In fact, they are supportive to government initiatives, and we are very serious about seeing something significant with these recommendations done in the budget session. I think that is only fair. We have gone out of our way to try to not add too much burden to the government's difficulty in dealing with areas which are important in both the short and long-term, and we think we have dealt in a very reasonable, constructive way with this budget, so in return, we very much expect to see some real response reflected in the O and M budget that's coming before us.

So with that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude my remarks. We, in the Northwest Territories, have our problems. We have increasing social problems that we think have to be addressed. We have an increasing fiscal problem, as every jurisdiction in the country has. We have right now a rather confusing array of constitutional processes -- some are linked, some aren't -- at different stages of evolution happening, which a lot of people in the territories find confusing.

On the other hand, we have tremendous strengths in the Northwest Territories, and though it's fashionable to bash governments and to bash politicians and to bash legislative assemblies, in fact, I think it's quite extraordinary how well this Legislative Assembly works. People come from all over the territories, from different cultures, speaking different languages. The government, which is essentially a minority here in the House, has to act as an ever-changing coalition government. Though we have had our differences, I think that this House works as well, if not better, than most legislatures in southern Canada.