Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To continue on the social side of that ledger, battered and abused women and their children used emergency shelters at a rate eight times the national average in the year 2001-2002, and yet this Legislature is struggling with how to trim our budget by $20 million in each of the next two years. In the meantime, over those same two years, Ottawa will reap in excess of an estimated $350 million from our resources. What's wrong with this picture? Are we destined to be only a cash cow for the federal treasury while our people catch only a few crumbs of precious resources as they literally fly out of here at unprecedented rates? Where is the legacy? What's in it for us?

Last week, Mr. Speaker, the Throne Speech promised a strategy for the North. I'm as encouraged as anyone that Ottawa seems finally to be waking up to our plight, as well as our potential, but it was four years ago that DIAND promised to resolve the devolution issue of resource riches for the NWT and that deal is still a far-off fantasy.

We must temper, Mr. Speaker, whatever optimism we have for that strategy with clear resolve and a strong dose of reality, if we are to help ourselves to gain a share of what is already ours. Achieving devolution must be the single and most urgent priority before this Assembly, for at the rate we are going, the future is ours to lose. As those diamond mines accelerate and that pipeline advances, we don't have a day to lose. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause