Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Finance Minister, in his budget speech, had made references to the concern of the honourable Member. However, in replying to his questions in regard to how do we achieve a Northern Accord and how do we lower the amount of the clawback that the federal government does whenever we generate revenue; the clawback is, every time we generate a dollar, they take $.80 off the revenue, the grant. The net increase we have is $.20 on the dollar so it is not very good incentive for us to try to generate dollars.
In mid-March along with the previous Finance Minister, Mr. John Todd, I had an opportunity to meet with Ms. Jane Stewart, the Minister of DIAND, as well as the federal Finance Minister, Paul Martin. We explained the agenda, we will call it the Western Agenda at that time, since we were still together with Nunavut. The way I approached it is that I said that we are not here to ask for any more money, but I think we have found a way where eventually it will cost the federal government less money to take care of us in the north. That is the approach that I took in explaining the agenda to the federal Minister, so he likes the principle that we ran by him in regard to the fiscal arrangement of seeing if we could retain more of the dollar if we generate a new dollar, more than $.20. We did not say the number, but we wanted to make sure there is a possibility of making an arrangement with the federal government of retaining more of the dollar if we generate a new dollar. At the same time, we mentioned that maybe one way of approaching this is to look at this whole area of sharing control of our resources again. We did not get into exact details of how we are going to do it, but we ran the principle by him and he is supportive of it.
This is where the arrangement will have to be made, is that we have to make an arrangement with the northern aboriginal nations, different governments up here, along with the territorial government. This is what we are working at. We are trying to develop a rapport and some arrangement and this is where we are at. We need a partnership arrangement with them before we go to the federal government. The federal government, I think, right now is receptive to our agenda. There is precedence taken in the Yukon where the oil and gas devolution is pretty well concluded in the devolution from the federal to the Yukon government. It is done in the north in another territory. It kind of sets a precedent, so I think we are working closer towards some arrangement than we were a few months ago. Thank you.