Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Throughout the Northwest Territories, one of the major economic developments over the last 30 years has been the development of the cooperative movement. Much of the credit goes to the federal government who saw that this made sense in the kind of jurisdiction that we have.
When I was a young boy, Mr. Speaker, everybody shopped at the co-op in our village. It was locally owned, all the employees were local, all the dividends went to local people, all the staff and management and everything was local, and people had a great attachment to it.
It's been a terrible battle for the co-op to get itself established in the Northwest Territories despite the sense that it made, simply because there was another huge corporation that had been here for 350 years: the Hudson Bay Company, who fought like fury to stop it from getting a foothold. Many of the people who worked for that company remember the battles they had with local co-op people who were trying to provide competition with this monolithic force, which was at that time based in London and Europe.
Mr. Speaker, now that the Hudson Bay Company really doesn't operate in the Northwest Territories, we should not have opposition any more to this kind of development. I believe that our government should recognize what it has done, it's achievements and importance to northern people and we should find in our hearts enough sympathy and understanding to provide the kind of support that this operation needs if it is going to survive into the future.
I shall be asking the Minister of Economic Development and Tourism some questions about this later. Thank you.