Madam Chair, yes, I will certainly be respectful of the rights and aspirations of the aboriginal governments. There's no intention at all to try to take over or interfere in other people's rights when it comes to devolution or anything else. But we will work with the aboriginal governments. We made that commitment ourselves.

Having said that, we, as 19 MLAs, represent all of the people of the Territories. Hopefully the thoughts of the people in your constituencies all come back here, and we can debate how far we should go or shouldn't go on various issues.

On the discussions on territorial financing formula, I view that the territorial financing formula is just an issue that is internal within our government. It is how we are funded as a government. When we get into the issue, if we do make headway on that side, on resource revenue sharing, then that is where we have to work with the aboriginal leaders, because they also have rights in some land claims. In fact, even in all of the land claims, there are some provisions for resource revenue sharing, and, in some cases, even when there isn't a land claim in the Deh Cho, there is a provision there. So we recognize that and we have to work together on that.

Quite honestly, a concern that I have is that we need to complete devolution and resource revenue sharing quickly

because there is a lot of economic development going on, and it is much easier to have an agreement before we have some of these major projects maturing and in operation. We have already gone a long ways with the diamond mines. There is a lot of revenue going out of here. I did look, following up on a Member's question last week, at how much revenue is raised by the federal government in the Northwest Territories. Last year, it was in the neighbourhood of $170 million. A few years ago, it was only $38 million, so it is going up fast. I believe we should be getting our fair share of it. That is another argument besides territorial financing.

You made reference that we all have to go to Ottawa and so on. I don't want to suggest it, but I think we should keep in mind that we don't have to wait to do something like that until we are so desperate that we have to go there and then beg for things. I don't think there is anything wrong, personally, and if we wanted to have, for example, a Northwest Territories day in Ottawa and let the MPs in Ottawa know what is going on up here, what the potential is and so on, we don't have to wait for a crisis to do it. If the Members were interested in doing that, then I think it is something we should talk about. It may be worth it to spend a day just saying here is what we are all about, here are the issues we live with. You will have to pay for it, but...

---Laughter

...we can work it out. I don't think always waiting until there is a crisis is the best way of doing business. I think we can be open to other ways of getting our message through to Ottawa. It is important that we do that. Thank you.