Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My Member's statement is on the big picture of energy in relation to some of my honourable colleagues' Member's statements. We are like the Eveready bunny rabbit on the TV commercial that keeps going and going and going, with the emphasis on Eveready. Mr. Speaker, we, in the North, have a tremendous amount of opportunities to deal with energy resources. We're on the verge of the biggest single mega project in Canada: the long-awaited pipeline, to the various hydro potential opportunities we have in the North. This is only the tip of the iceberg as to what we, as northerners, are allowing the federal government to dictate our quality of living and lead us around.
Mr. Speaker, we don't have enough means to deal with our energy issues because, Mr. Speaker, we don't have constitutional protection or clout to tell the federal government enough is enough. We can, and do, pay our own way and make a significant contribution to Canada.
Mr. Speaker, I made reference to the Eveready bunny, earlier in my statement, that keeps going on and on and on. The question that may be asked is, is this government the Eveready bunny in that we just keep going and going and going and rely heavily on the feds to change our batteries or to wind us up and keep leading us on to what we are doing today, whining about the sad state of our government, the need to get a fair share of the resource revenue sharing, to look at our energy in the North here?
Mr. Speaker, until we have the clout, as may be in the constitutional rights in Canada, we will continue to deal with our energy issues as we are doing with our communities by creating various awareness campaign programs and taking responsibility for personal energy use and to make the tough choices. We have to decide either to pay for food or pay for fuel today. Mr. Speaker, we, as northern people, are losing a lot of energy, both in resource development payments and the ability to take a stand against the federal government. As a territory, in the early days of Confederation, we appreciated their guidance, and now that we're big enough, we have to realize that we need to say to this federal government, can we leave our sandbox now, and allow us the dignity to be rightfully participant in the nation we call Canada.
The Premier has called himself, has been referred to as Gandhi as other Members...