Mahsi, Madam Speaker. Once again, Madam Speaker, cruise missiles will shatter the silence of our northern skies. Once again, the opinions of northern people and this government will be ignored.

For almost 40 years, Madam Speaker, the Northwest Territories have been the playground of the United States military industrial complex. Starting in the mid-1950s and continuing to this day, northerners have had strange substances dropped on them, military satellites and cruise missiles falling on them, and nuclear submarines under them.

Madam Speaker, we, as northerners, are no longer a colony of Ottawa subject to the whims of departmental mandarins who are put on this earth to look after the interests of the misbegotten Dene and Inuit. In this Assembly, there are 24 people elected to represent the views of their constituents, and the view of the vast majority of northerners, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, is that cruise missile testing must stop.

In 1987, the Dean of the House, Mr. Pudluk, rose to make an emergency statement on the American Airforce activities in the north Baffin, in the mid to late 1950s. In his statement, the honourable Member lamented the lack of consultation and the fact that residents of north Baffin weren't even warned that Americans were up to something in the northern skies.

Madam Speaker, the only change in the American and Canadian governments' attitude toward the feeling of northern residents is that they now give us a few hours notice so our northern pilots can get out of their way. There is still no consultation. Everything is still a secret, and northerners' thoughts and feelings have not been taken into account.

Madam Speaker, I urge the Liberal government to live up to their election promise, to ban the testing of cruise missiles over the Northwest Territories. The Russian threat is gone. Let's take positive steps to wipe out the mentality that we must have bigger, stronger and faster bombs than the other guy. Mahsi, Madam Speaker.

---Applause