Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is no doubt that the Northwest Territories is a huge storehouse of resources. Oil, gas, mining, minerals, diamonds, gold and nickel, copper, you name it and we probably have it. It is a matter of getting it to market, in most cases finding it, developing it and getting it to market. There is no question about that. It is important to work with the aboriginal groups to reach a Northern Accord and I certainly would be supportive of that. The area of concern with that, as I mentioned earlier, is how do we achieve a Northern Accord, and there is a complication with that, of course, but how do we get approval from the federal government to acknowledge that they have to lower the amount that they claw back from us when we get a Northern Accord? In other words, right now I understand it is $.75 in every dollar that they claw back. It has to come down to something like $.30 or $.25 for us to make it worthwhile. That is the challenge for us to achieve. We need to get control of the resources, but secondly we have to alter the formula financing. Could the Minister tell us if my assumption in that is correct?
Jake Ootes on Question 156-13(7): Generation Of Additional Revenues
In the Legislative Assembly on April 29th, 1999. See this statement in context.
Supplementary To Question 156-13(7): Generation Of Additional Revenues
Question 156-13(7): Generation Of Additional Revenues
Item 6: Oral Questions
April 28th, 1999
Page 438
See context to find out what was said next.