Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I sit here and I am not too sure if I want to cry or congratulate the Dogrib for taking the time to really invest $28 million of their own money to negotiate a land claim agreement; $28 million that they have to pay back out of their land claim agreement. I have a real problem when we sit here and say we haven't heard about it. For those of us that grew up in the Northwest Territories and were born and raised here, we have been bombarded by land claims, land claims, land claims, for over 20 years. It all started with the Inuvialuit claim back in 1984, which at that time there was a lot of dispute going on because the Inuvialuit got their claim in which treaties originated all the way to the coastline. A lot of lands were given up; there was a lot of dispute over that. Then came along the Dene/Metis claim process in which a lot of dollars were spent in that process again. Again, that was on the national scene, it was basically at every assembly you went to, it was covered live across the Northwest Territories. So we have been bombarded by information, negotiations, what is going on, what happened at the assemblies, and these information sessions were a process that was there to include the whole population of the Northwest Territories, not just the aboriginal population.
I have been involved in this process going on from the Dene/Metis process to the Gwich'in land claims settlement to the Sahtu agreement, and I am just totally appalled that we can sit here and say that we have not been informed of what is going on. The sad thing about it, the only thing the Government of the Northwest Territories has ever done with any land claim agreement was make a few amendments to the wildlife section to include the Inuvialuit wildlife rights in 1994. That is the only thing that this legislature has ever done to encompass a land claim agreement in territorial legislation. Even today, we are still trying to find ways to include the wildlife provisions of those other land claim agreements, the Gwich'in, the Sahtu agreement, and now the Tlicho agreement. Yet the Inuvialuit sections in their agreements have not even been totally implemented since they settled in 1984.
So I find it really hard to sit here saying that we are not totally involved in the process. The land claims process originally started through treaties which were signed back in 1921, Treaty 11; and 1889 in regard to Treaty 8. Those were treaties between two nations, the Government of Canada and First Nations governance in the Northwest Territories. What has happened since then because of court cases, the Paulette case and other cases that were out there, is that the First Nations people have never surrendered their rights to their lands and their resources, so that is basically where the claims process started from. Since then, there has been a long, drawn out process and a lot of negotiations, public meetings and also the whole process of ratification. First Nations people have a higher requirement to ratify their land claim agreements than most governments have to ratify a budget, in which you have to basically have a high percentage of turnout and then also have a high percentage for ratification. No other governments have to go through that strenuous a process of ratification for anything.
I think it is that process that gave the federal government and the First Nations people the opportunity to negotiate what we call today modern treaties, in which this is what this is. I think knowing that we have modern treaties to improve the old treaties and what they were and the authority this government really has in the Northwest Territories is to deal with municipal legislation. The municipal legislation we are talking about would not happen through this legislation. It will happen with the next legislature. You have coming into force the Tlicho Community Governance Act and the Tlicho Community Services Agency Act, on top of that legislation you are still going to have to come back to this House to try to get ratification on your wildlife provisions which we have been pounding away on for over 10 years. I always come to this House with my land claims on my desk because for me there is an obligation that this government has in here, it is spelled out. It doesn't say the government should "make," it says they shall "do" certain things. For me this government has not acted on any of those endeavors. We have a parks provision here to establish territorial parks. We have a park just outside of Inuvik called the Gwich'in Territorial Park, that was established under our land claim agreement. It took them over 10 years to bring this thing to life where you can actually physically use it, and that was part of a land claim agreement. I touched on the other provisions dealing with forestry. There is a whole section dealing with forestry. We have never sat down with the government to negotiate that section yet we are spending millions of dollars on behalf of First Nations that basically comes from Ottawa by way of transfer agreements. We have other sections in this agreement, which basically talk about the wildlife section, which I touched on. We have wildlife boards, but technically, they don't have the legislative authority, the authority is still with the Minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development to have the final say on if he wants to establish a regulation and he wants to shut your highway down or he basically wants to stop hunting on the highway. All he has to do is sign his name on a piece of paper. The boards don't have a say on that. It is the regulations that are passed by the Minister. It is not passed by the boards and until you make amendments to the Wildlife Act, none of that will happen.
I get totally frustrated sitting here and hearing that we did not take the time to have public hearings. I recommended to the committee that we have public hearings Wednesday night and yet they were forced to say okay, let's bring it back into the House right away and we will do it on the floor of the House. So which is it? You can't win or lose on this one. The legislation that we are bringing forth is just a number of clauses, it is no big deal. The big deal will happen when we basically pass the governance act in this Legislative Assembly. That is when we'll get down to detail and we'll be able to have full public consultation on the whole aspect of governance. That is where the responsibility of this government lies.
I think it is important to note that there has been a lot of emphasis in regard to the overall idea that everyone has to ratify this process. The only group that has to ratify this process is the Tlicho people; it is their land claim. They have made the deal with Canada to basically settle for what is laid out in their land claim agreement and part of that deal means that those other First Nations rights and rights of other people that are out there have been dealt with through other processes through overlapping agreements or working out boundary agreements with other First Nations to work together.
One thing that we don't hear much about is the whole idea of land claims is to give us certainty in the Northwest Territories, to give us comfort that we realize that without having these land claims settled, there will always be uncertainty in regard to the diamond industry and the oil and gas industry. Development in the Northwest Territories will come to a halt unless we conclude the land claims. Now we have an opportunity to take one more step to try to conclude the land claims in the Northwest Territories by having this agreement be legislated into effect and that is what these land claims are supposed to do is to give us certainty, to give industry certainty and people in the Northwest Territories that those outstanding questions of land rights, rights of who is going to have what lands and what regulatory process or what systems are going to be in place so people can really understand it and that is what they are there for.
With that, I would just like to say that this is what this agreement does. It gives us the certainty we need, especially in regard to the diamond developments that are happening in the North Slave and elsewhere and also up and down the valley. The next agreements we are looking at are the Akaitcho Territory and the Deh Cho and we should be supporting them and moving them forward, not trying to find roadblocks to put up to avoid the implementation of those processes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.