Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, generally, and I would have to say at the officials or bureaucrat level, the message that has come from Finance Canada is that Finance Canada negotiates arrangements that work with provincial and territorial governments. It does not enter into agreements with municipal governments or aboriginal governments and so on. To my knowledge, they have not changed their view on that. I have not heard that same sentiment from the political leaders, Mr. Speaker. I have heard it, though, clearly from the officials in the department. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for the Premier, the Honourable Joe Handley. They centre on the devolution framework and negotiations that I guess are underway. This is where I am seeking some clarification. March 18th of this year, the Premier, in his capacity of Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, and the Minister of Indian Affairs, and a number of other aboriginal leaders signed the NWT Lands and Resources Devolution Framework Agreement. In that agreement, it sets out a timeline that suggests that an effective target date for this agreement shall be April of 2006. That is only about a-year-and-a-half from now, Mr. Speaker, but today and last week, the Minister told us that they are looking at an interim resource revenue sharing process because -- and I am quoting from Hansard of last Wednesday, Mr. Speaker -- "because I am not 100 percent confident that we are moving fast enough on devolution." The question that I would like to ask, Mr. Speaker, is which deal are we negotiating, the one that was signed just seven months ago, or now some new process that we still seem to be feeling around for conceptual agreement? Which deal is the one that is on the table? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. The honourable Premier, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, we only have a formal negotiating table for the main devolution agreement. The concept, the idea, the proposal of interim resource revenue sharing is not at a table right now. We continue to negotiate devolution. The next meeting is October 26th to 28th, so we are still talking devolution. Mr. Speaker, I have been discouraged by this slow pace since when the Aboriginal Summit wanted to get a new negotiator. We did. We had an election and change of Ministers of DIAND since then, a change of Ministers of Finance. Things have slowed us down to the point where I am not confident that we can have a quick devolution deal because, even in the North, some of the aboriginal organizations have not negotiated their final agreements. The Akaitcho, Deh Cho and NWT Metis are saying we want to negotiate our own deal before we get serious about devolution. There are so many things working against a longer-term devolution deal that my feeling is, at the same time that is happening, we are seeing resources going out of here. We have to get something in the interim, something that comes into effect now, not 18 years from now.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, I couldn't agree more that as the wealth of the territory is pumped and flown and driven out of the NWT, then we have to act as soon as we can to get a share of it. This is where Ottawa seems to be so good at the game. They have been very good at this for years. Process, divide and conquer are the tactics that keep us off balance and hurt us when we try to do this. The preamble to this deal of the signing, Mr. Speaker, on March 18th, refers quite clearly to the realization of resource revenue. It is not just a management deal, it is a money deal, too. Is this agreement worth the paper that it is written on, Mr. Speaker?

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, that agreement, in my view, is worth the integrity of everybody who signed it. That is what is going to determine how we treat that agreement. When we signed it, we took it very seriously. I am sure the aboriginal leaders who signed it took it seriously. So that is a serious deal. Mr. Speaker, I will say that we are not going to be rushed into signing or entering into some kind of devolution deal that is not a good deal. I would sooner have no deal than a bad deal.

We are going to take our time. We are going to make sure that we have a good devolution deal. In the meantime, if we can get an interim resource revenue sharing, to get the money flowing here, the money staying here, I want to do that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Supplementary, Mr. Braden.

Mr. Speaker, the answer that the Premier gave is one that I was hoping he would. There are a lot of people standing behind this. The signature of the previous Minister of Northern Affairs is on here too, and yet this seems to be where the bottleneck is. Why is it that, as we all seem to agree, on March 18th, that we can't say, okay, we agreed to live up to a deadline here of April 2006 to make this deal work? Why is it that we can't do it? Just do it. All this stuff about interim this, and sort of that, and maybe this, I am just so tired of it, Mr. Speaker. We make an agreement to get somewhere, and yet somewhere along the line it falls apart. Why can't we stick to the plan and work the plan? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, as one party to the plan, we have been working hard to stick to the plan and move ahead with it, but I cannot speak for the other two parties on this one, the aboriginal leaders and the federal government. We want to move ahead as quickly as we can on this and will do everything we can. Mr. Speaker, we have to understand that we are not in control of it ourselves. We have two other parties we have to work with. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Item 7, oral questions. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise again today to bring forward some of my concerns to a shepherd of our Assembly. I raised many questions in my Member's statement today. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Premier if he knows whether or not the federal government will deduct from our grants the resources and revenues that the territory may collect in the future -- I stress may -- from the pipeline even if we do get a resource revenue agreement and deal. What does he have to demonstrate certainty; not his gut feeling, certainty? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Premier, Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, we will not sign a deal that is not a good deal, so I can have that as a piece of certainty. Mr. Speaker, I fully expect that as a territory we are going to someday have much less of a grant from the federal government and be more self-reliant on our own resource revenue. So I expect the federal government will take some money out of our grant, but I think we've got a lot of wealth in this territory and we need to keep it here for our people. We can live someday on our own resource revenues and be a have jurisdiction in Canada. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I hope and I pray our Premier is right, that some day...However, the way I read the agreement now or I see us proceeding, I should say, not reading the agreement, is, yes, our resource benefit will increase, but our grant will decrease and still it will be a level playing field, there will be no change. So I can't see that we are proceeding in a direction right now that is what I want as concrete.

Mr. Speaker, the Pembina Institute released a report that was on the radio in August, saying that the federal government who sets the royalties is giving away the territory's oil and gas resources at a low cost. Between 1995 and 2002, on average, only $2.20 per barrel of oil was collected for production in the NWT. Now compare that to $14 per barrel in Norway, $11.50 in Alaska per barrel. I would like to ask the Premier if he could address this issue or has he addressed this issue on the federal government. Are we giving away our resource revenues for nothing? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Speaker, first of all let me say that when we balance our grants and our own resource revenues, we expect to have what we have always referred to as a net fiscal benefit. We never want to see a dollar for dollar, otherwise why are we doing this. Mr. Speaker, on the other one, on the report, yes, I believe the federal government is not getting the fiscal resources out of our natural resource development. We are not getting what we should and I saw the same report, I know we are getting much, much less than some of the Scandinavian countries, for example. Mr. Speaker, that's the federal government. We don't have any say on that right now, and, of course, that's why devolution is important. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, thank you very much. Mr. Speaker, the way I see it right now is we could be spending money better and how could that be happening? I bet we could get further by spending $1 million on a television commercial that could air all across Canada for people in Canada, and maybe even we could wake up some of those parliamentarians down in Ottawa

to see what is really happening up here. I think our resource money is being stolen. There is no Robin Hood stealing from the Northwest Territories and giving it back to the people, Mr. Premier. I think our Prime Minister should be going to jail, the way he is stealing from us.

Mr. Speaker, would the Premier tell us today, how much money is...