Diamonds are important, very important, as Mr. Ballantyne continually points out. But without an accord, we remain just bit players, just not very important at all. Unless we have an agreement as to how we're going to develop, it's meaningless. All the activity is meaningless to us if we continue to have the same kind of dependence on the federal government.

I would also urge Mr. Todd -- and I can't stress this enough, Mr. Speaker, because it's another part of the equation -- to make sure we have in place a sustainable development policy. Because if we don't have that, the north will continue to be a battleground where the environmentalists and the industrialists are going to be fighting it out and there are going to be groups from all over the world wanting to join in the fray because we don't have our act together. We should have a policy on sustainable development so that I can say, no, I'm not an environmentalist, I am a person who supports sustainable development. I'm in favour of development, like everybody else, but it can't be a battleground any more, where we have armies fighting against each other on each side of the equation. If we don't get this accord and we don't get a sustainable development policy, the federal government knows quite well now as it sits there with a huge proposal in front of it, that the challenge it faces is to get some headway in helping development in our part of the world without doing it in a way that will antagonize the World Wildlife Fund and the Sierra Club and all the other groups around the world that are just waiting for the chance to jump in. So we should support all those initiatives right now to do those two things: the northern accord of one kind or another, whatever we can get that makes sense to us; and also, a sustainable development policy so we don't end up having huge fights up here which nobody wants and will be debilitating and I think will end up destroying all the good efforts that we've made to date. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause