Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank the Premier for his response and I'm glad to hear that the Prime Minister might have a steady hand in overseeing

this and that the three northern Premiers will be working together on this committee to try to develop this strategy. But the Prime Minister six months ago put Minister McLellan in charge of the pipeline file and to be honest, Madam Chair, we haven't seen Ms. McLellan in the Northwest Territories since she's been appointed to overlook that file. To me, that is wrong.

Again, I'm sceptical of Ottawa of what they say and what they do and I think when we are talking about devolution and we're talking about resource revenue sharing, I think that the answer to it all, Madam Chair, is that we sit down with Ottawa, politician-to-politician and we leave the bureaucrats out of it because in my mind that is the problem. Once you include the senior level bureaucrats of DIAND, and we've got bureaucrats here, it gets into a quagmire that you can't solve and I think we have to sit down and hammer something out between us and between Ottawa. I see that as the key to us getting over this hurdle. Once you start looking at another strategy and you get bureaucrats involved, the tires keep spinning, Madam Chair, and they'll spin forever.

My fear is we're going to go another six years, or we're going to go another 10 years without anything. The time for talk has got to almost be near the end because we really, really have to get something concrete from Ottawa. Some of my colleagues were happy with what happened down there but, Madam Chair, it's not what the Prime Minister told our Premier three months ago when he was in Ottawa. He went back on his word already on the monies that he said would come North. So are we going to trust him again to oversee this process? We really have to get some firm commitments from Ottawa and, to be honest, Madam Chair, I have not seen one firm commitment. We're sitting here, it's 2004, and I hope to be here six years from now or eight years from now and I sure as heck hope I'm not talking about the same thing at that point in time six or 10 years from now. The way we are going in including all these bureaucrats, it becomes a real mess, Madam Chair, and we really have to do something about it and now is the time for action. Thank you.