Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure today to speak to the motion that I put forward. Mr. Speaker, the bill of intent is an alternative to devolution. The Premier has clearly advocated to the northern leaders and in his travels, and I want to state some of his replies to a number of questions back in the early part of the session. I am just going to paraphrase a number of statements he made. He is clear about...(inaudible)..."We are looking for arrangements similar to what the provinces have where the people of the North are responsible for the land, the resources of the North and we have a fair resource revenue sharing agreement."
He points out also that how negotiations are split between the Department of Northern Affairs who is handling the devolution of powers and the Department of Finance, which is looking after the royalty issue. This is a fatal flaw in the view of Handley who insists that the territory is not interested in seeing more responsibilities and costs without an agreement for resource revenue sharing. In finality, he says this has been going on far too long, let's get on with it.
Mr. Speaker, my riding of Inuvik Twin Lakes, as I stated in my reply to opening address, in which I stated very emphatically they want political transformation and it's discouraging to them the time it takes the Government of Canada to make a commitment to devolution and resource revenue sharing.
I want to point out that this motion states that people want political transformation and this is one method of achieving it. The procedural format is fairly standard, Mr. Speaker. What is important in the context of this statement is that it is time to get ownership of the lands and resources and control as a Premier. There was a statement several months ago that it takes 30 to 50 years to assume ownership, but that was 100 years ago, Mr. Speaker. In today's high tech era, it shouldn't take that long with the way information flows back and forth. I think it's incumbent upon ourselves as legislators in the Northwest Territories to really emphasize the need to gain ownership, otherwise we are going to be like the other two territories where they will take out the minerals, have a tremendous amount of resource revenue and at the end of the day, which could be 30 to 50 years after the lands are depleted of their wealth, we will assume the liabilities. I think that has occurred in the past with Giant Mine and perhaps this year with Con Mine. There are a number of other gold mines that are laying dormant that have environmental issues relating to them that extend not only into the Territories, but other provinces as well.
So we need to look in the context of this motion at our place in Canada that goes beyond resource and revenue sharing, but also addresses our sovereignty issue. I don't think we are any different from Quebec. Quebec has often called for referendums to secede from Canada. I don't
think we want to go that far, but we certainly want to have the public interest of Canadians to support our ongoing initiative to try to work through to provincehood.
We also need to address the essential points, Mr. Speaker, in the sense that we need to plant a seed. Currently we sit under the federal statute. Let me cross-reference a number of issues in terms of our Legislative Assembly. The two major differences between the legislative powers of the territories and that of the powers of provincehood are the powers of the provinces to amend their constitution and control the management and sale of public lands.
The Constitution of 1982 grants each province the power to amend its own constitution. The constitution of the Northwest Territories is the Northwest Territories Act, which is a federal statute. Therefore, only the Prime Minister of Canada has the right to amend the constitution of the Northwest Territories.
That's why it's important, Mr. Speaker, in trying to redress our constitutional issue that we ask the Premier to take this and work with the federal government and also the Premiers to see if we can garner support for the Northwest Territories. Hopefully the Yukon and Nunavut will embrace such an undertaking and initiative.
I might add, Mr. Speaker, other addendums are in effect as well, and each province has the sale and management of public lands. Those lands in the Territories remain Crown, which is federal land. Aboriginal governments who settle land claims are also large land owners. Unlike a province, the three territories do not have the power to deal with the lands within their boundaries. That's a key issue, Mr. Speaker. If we are going to promote and work with industry and we talk about partnerships with aboriginal governments, I don't think we have the constitutional framework to do that. I think it really translates into a meaningless way in how we govern ourselves. We don't want to deal in the past tense, Mr. Speaker.
We want to deal with the future, what the future of the Territories evolves into. That's important. We need to realize that as long as we remain under a federal statute, we have no methodology to develop a way we can generate revenues outside of what is given to this government through federal/territorial transfers. I sympathize with the Minister of Finance who goes down to Ottawa and other major cities across Canada and tries to negotiate a fair financial arrangement and yet come back with approximately $3.5 million to enhance our ever-growing budget demands.
I see us working more closely with aboriginal governments and also being beneficiaries of land claim agreements, and the study of the way the process works and the transfers between the federal government and the aboriginal governments indicate strongly to me that much of the transfers circumvent the Government of the Northwest Territories. I think that's not fair to the NWT as we often have to administer the funds through to aboriginal governments. When we do come up with critical management problems, we have nowhere to turn and we are not in a position to try to cost-share any of the program service and deliveries that we are obligated to.
So I certainly want to encourage Members of this Assembly to look very closely at how we function as a government. The future of this government is again at the beck and call of federal statute of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada on the devolution of programs and services. So under the financial arrangements, we have to deal with Finance Canada, which isn't willing to deal with the territorial government outside of what is normally given to us under transfers.
We are hearing Members of this House talk to problems of their constituents not accessing that level of service or being under funded. I believe this strongly gives us the suggestion that we need to support the motion and work through the process that is laid out under the federal jurisdiction. I want to assure the Members that we need to clearly look at where we stand in the Canadian Constitution and give our Premier and our Ministers the capability of sitting down face to face and having some powers. The systematic approach we want to take is going to be cost-beneficial to the Northwest Territories, not only to ourselves but to the residents.
I see it as a long-term plan, but today we need to begin to plant the seed, Mr. Speaker. I want to assure the Premier that certainly from the riding of Inuvik Twin Lakes and hopefully the rest of the Members will join in in supporting our government to assume some of those powers beyond just turning over responsibility to our constituents which, at the end of the day, will be confronted with huge fiscal deficits and having to mitigate future cost controls in terms of how we provide that level of service.
Again, I wanted to speak briefly. I had spoken briefly to the level of intent to the Constitution Act of 1982 and laid out some format of how we should proceed with it, giving the Premier the mandate to move out on this very large, but very important initiative on behalf of at least my riding, as the mover. I will speak again at the conclusion of the debate. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
