Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I too have some concerns with regard to the resources that are presently within the department, especially for people who want to get involved in the oil and gas sector. In the Delta, I have been working along with the tribal council and other companies within the Delta trying to excise dollars out of the department. Yet they are strapped for cash. They do not have any money to do a simple feasibility study.
You have to wait until the new fiscal year. If that is how we are going to get our people involved in business, I think it is the wrong way to go. We spend a lot of money within the diamond sector. We have done a lot of studies. We have done a lot of strategies and we have spent a lot of money developing nice, fancy reports, but at the end of it all, we do not have money to put proposals together to access dollars from other agencies, the federal government and what not.
We have to put more emphasis on providing the people within the private sector with the resources so they can get started in the industry by partnering with different people and getting proposals to access federal dollars or even seed money to get a business started. We have to do more there.
Yes, it will be great if we have an economic development agreement, but at the present time, we do not. I feel the federal government is taking a lot of resources and revenue out of the North yet we, who call those resources our resources, are not getting any resources back to call our own. We have to do more to promote the private sector, communities, regional organizations so they are able to access dollars and take advantage of those opportunities, especially in the oil and gas industry.
We have to start looking at developing strategies and start seeing how we can take advantage of the economic situation. A lot of people are putting a lot of eggs in the pipeline basket. My view is if you can come up with $5 billion to build a pipeline, the more power to you. A lot of aboriginal groups do not have that type of funding. I think they are better off concentrating on the service sector of business and that industry so you have these long-term jobs, not strictly by owning a piece of infrastructure or a utility system.
We have to find ways to look at the long-term job that is going to come with this development, so that we have people there who are going to be able to benefit in the long term and not just go for short-term gain where we have the boom/bust scenario. Once it is gone, the non-renewable resources have been taken out, they are not going to be able to be put back into the ground.
I think it is important that we also do a lot more to protect our environment. One of the things I have a lot of concern about, and I have not heard much of in the news, is we hear a lot about oil and gas development. However, one of the most sensitive spawning areas for fish that come from the Beaufort Sea into the Mackenzie River system comes from a lot of the creeks and rivers and lakes that run into the Beaufort Sea and the Mackenzie Delta.
I for one feel that with all of the seismic activity and what not, we could see a very major decline in that fish population. The same thing applies to the marine environment in the Beaufort Sea.
The other area that everyone knows I have a concern with is the whole aspect of the Porcupine Caribou, the calving grounds and what we see happening in Alaska. It is a renewable resource that will sustain people's lives long after a pipeline is built and long after the oil and gas is gone. If we do not do anything to protect that renewable resource and we have major impacts on those species, then we, as a people who depend on and live off of the land, depending on that food source, will be like any other country in the world where you see people have decimated their renewable resources for the sake of development.
I think there has to be a balance between the renewable resource sector and the non-renewable resource sector. As a government, I think we have to do more to look at improving our legislative processes and also finding ways to find a balance between them.
The other area that I feel we have to do more in is looking at our responsibilities on enforcement. We are cutting back, especially with our renewable resource officers. We have cut back in regard to people within our organization because of the cuts that have happened within the last five years. We have lost a lot of good people.
In order to keep people within government and keep people interested in the different sectors in regard to the renewable resource officers or people like our economic development officers, we do have to ensure that we continue the same strong human resource requirement in the North and making sure that we have people there.
One thing I feel that we do not really seem to hear much of, especially from this government, is the overall social and economic impacts of these developments on these small communities. Growing up in the Mackenzie Delta and being involved in the oil and gas industry for almost eight years, I have seen the impacts that come from oil and gas development where we say, the motto was, "two weeks to make her, and two weeks to spend her". That is practically what it was.
There was a lot of money wasted because of not having an inhibition that this industry was going to be around...it was there forever. You had a job for 20 or 30 years. When it crashed, it crashed big time. I think for us as a government, realizing that some of the problems we see now with FAE/FAS, social problems we see in our communities in regard to alcohol abuse, suicides, and what not, you can directly associate all of that to development back in the 60's and 70's.
I think as a government, we sort of lose track of the social side of our government or ourselves as people. The mighty dollar drives everything nowadays, especially in this country. As a government, we seem to be focusing too much energy in that area. A lot of that energy that we are using up, at the end of it all, we are not getting anything back. The federal government is the benefactor to all of these initiatives that we are taking on.
I think we as a government have to start looking at how we can improve not only the economics, but the social conditions and the systems that we have in place. Look at the statistics, look at the social statistics. Look at the money we spend on health, education, other areas and we are not seeing results. We continue to put more and more money into it, but at the end of it all, we as a government are continuing to try to find ways of nickel and diming and balancing that budget, but not realizing that we have to do better planning. We have to realize that we have to find a balance, a way to generate revenues, but also improve the lives of the people in the North who are going to be here, who were born and raised here and will eventually die here.
The development comes and goes. When you put too much emphasis in that arena, I think you have to realize, like anything else, look at the east coast fisheries. We are no different than the fishing industry. They are like the harvesters in the North. We are seeing it on the west coast. When you become too dependant on a particular sector of our economy, when it crashes, it affects everything. We have to balance out the opportunities and the resources we have. We have to have a diverse economic community from tourism to oil and gas to forestry and take advantage of all of the resources we have out there.
That is the short of it. I will ask if the Minister might be able to respond to a couple of those. Have at her.