Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it is pretty clear to me, if I may step back for a moment and just take some time to try and answer my colleague's serious question. Let us step back. The formula financing agreement we had with the federal government was cut back $240 million over a four year period; $60 million on an annual basis. The forced growth aspects, and I will remind everyone of this
government, is somewhere around $30 million to $40 million a year that we have no control over.
It was clear to me early on that we need to take the time and the energy to try to develop a strategy and to spend more time on trying to determine where we can get revenues. Governments find it easy to spend money, but that is the easy part of governing. The hard part of governing is managing money in this part of the country and more importantly, trying to find new ways in which to generate revenues.
When you investigate and look real close at where we can get revenues, it is clear to me and to my colleagues that the non-renewable resource industry is the one that can give you the kind of levels you require if you look five or ten years out.
The current ability for us to find new revenues is very limited. Twenty four to 26 percent of the revenues we get in our overall budget, come from the territories such as alcohol, cigarettes, gasoline, et cetera. The large impact is in the non-renewable resource site. If you have some faith in this country, as I do, that we can actually move it forward in an aggressive strategy to be able to access our resources and ensure both aboriginal and non-aboriginal people benefit from it. If the diamond mine has done nothing else, it has demonstrated to us the magnitude of dollars that are involved.
We need to move in a very comprehensive way to develop this strategy to encourage and support the industry and parallel with that, discuss with our federal colleagues the need to get into the window that they currently have to make us less dependent on the $834 million we currently get on an annual basis in the grant. That is what this strategy is all about. Thank you.