Thank you, Mr. Chairman. These comments from my colleagues have been very interesting here today. When I look at this document and the document that was introduced by the government with respect to the Northern Strategy, I have to ask myself what is new in this. What's different about this strategy as compared to any other strategy that's been developed over the last 20 years? I hate to be the pragmatic voice here, but I think we need to ask ourselves what's the key point. What are we trying to achieve here? Look at the devolution and the resource revenue sharing; if it's a new deal with Ottawa, why not just say that? I'm reluctant to overcomplicate the issue by again reciting all of our positions on everything, which are kind of not all that unique. It's kind of a given, like healthy people, self-reliance. You can take and transpose that onto any people anywhere in the world and those would be aspirations of anyone there. We certainly want to stand apart and make us unique. So I think that the Northern Strategy shouldn't be overly complex and complicated, because I think the danger in making it too complicated is that we end up identifying so many priorities and, in fact, there is no priority and then what do we accomplish.
I have been around for a little while and sometimes when we talk about these things, I just feel like we're stating things in kind of like platitudes that don't really translate into something real. We talk about a lot of concepts having to do with how we govern ourselves. We talk about self-government. All it really comes down to is how we organize ourselves as people in society, to ensure that people can interact with each other. I mean, what does anybody really need in life? We need food, we have basic needs, shelter, and we hope for something purposeful to do to be able to support ourselves. We'd like to have a few friends, family. I mean the needs of human beings are pretty standard. How we need to organize ourselves as a society to ensure that our children are educated and that we have health care services, we spend a lot of time talking about who is going to do those things. I guess the whole point of devolution is we say we know better, we can do better. So in order to do that, we need the resources to do that and that's just about how simple it is to me and the same applies to self-government.
I think self-government and claimant groups are saying we know what's best for us. We're unique in ways that have to do with culture and language and location and geography, and we know better than anybody else how to organize ourselves to meet the basic needs of the people that we are.
So I know I'm probably oversimplifying it, but I think I've sat on every constitutional forum that has discussed how
we're going to organize ourselves in the last 20 years, and sometimes I just wish we could take one small piece out of some of these plans and actually just do it. I know it's easier said than done, but, man, we've been talking about devolution and resource revenue sharing for an awfully long time. I'm glad that some people think that there's something on the horizon and I would like to believe that too, but somehow the partners, the people that are going to come to the table are going to have this dialogue and are going to discuss with us, have a different agenda. I'd like to believe that, but when we get to this point of more autonomy and more resources, in order to serve the needs of our people better I don't want people to get the idea that that's some kind of utopia either. It's not going to be some new world. It's just going to be us organized in a slightly different way with the same challenges, the same issues and again saying we think we know what's best to bring to the table to address those needs and to really facilitate the aspirations of the people that we represent.
So I guess if I could offer some encouragement to our leaders who will be having this discussion, it would be to be very precise and focused and try not to complicate things. Sometimes I think we should take what we've accomplished and put things on a line, on a timeline, on some kind of a continuum so we can see where we were, where we've come from, where we are right now and where we think we're going just to keep things in some kind of a perspective.
I have heard some new things today like the idea of a trust fund. That's a very tangible, specific thing, which we could say okay, let's try and achieve that if that's something that we agree to. The new time frame is something I see new in this strategy. There have been some time frames put around some of these things we want to accomplish and if we realize them, then that is something new and that is something to work towards.
So I guess pretty much that's all I have to say. I just hope this isn't yet another strategy. I hope that we can kind of weed out the things that have been said before and look at what's new, what's different. I think just the more concise and focused we are, the more likely we are to actually see something tangible. That is the advice I would give to our leaders and the people who will be having this discussion with us. Let's advance the agenda, but let's not get it weighted down with too many priorities, which will, I think, at the end of the day, kind of distract from actually getting things done. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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