Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My comments will be very brief. With the politics and the political record aside, very clearly money is going to determine the success in the creation of two new territories and this gives the banker an inordinate amount of influence, in this case, being the federal government. I think we have to realize that this is not a blank cheque kind of division, either, as we are very clearly aware. We have some hard decisions to make in every quarter, not just in the east, not just in the west, but as a territory. It is not easy to talk about division in the abstract and in political theory. We are getting down to the nitty gritty and we are talking nickels and dimes, people, jobs and houses. It is going to get very tough. There is going to be a lot of frank discussion. There is going to be a lot of heated debate. I think we just have to keep in mind, if we do not have the money to fund this ourselves, you cannot really call it self-government at this point because we are being bankrolled by a senior level of government. We are going to have to bite our tongues in a lot of cases. But we have to just keep pushing the way we are and keep putting the facts on the table. Nobody is going to get what they want completely out of this process. We just have to ensure fundamentally that we maintain services east and west and that we do not bankrupt our governments on a day-to-day basis, fund division that should be paid for by the federal government. I think this document just puts some hard numbers on the table and gets in peoples faces with the reality of what we are facing. Thank you.
Michael Miltenberger on Committee Motion 95-13(4): Motion To Defer Consideration Of Bill 5
In the Legislative Assembly on October 9th, 1997. See this statement in context.
Committee Motion 95-13(4): Motion To Defer Consideration Of Bill 5
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
October 9th, 1997
Page 1524
See context to find out what was said next.