Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am, of course, standing here today in favour of the motion. You know, Mr. Speaker, there are a few points I would like to make, but I would like to perhaps pick up from where my colleague, the Member for Kam Lake, left off. It is a plea for Ottawa to hear the message, but it is also a query, a concern about who is going to take that message. I would volunteer, Mr. Speaker. As we have been talking about this afternoon, will it, should it really come down to one person, one messenger? I would argue that it is really a collective, Mr. Speaker, a collective of representatives of our government along with our colleagues, our counterparts in the aboriginal governments. It will be a joint message delivered by a team, by a group of people who stand in favour of the common good, what is in it for all of us, which is really what is missing right now, Mr. Speaker. That is who I know, Mr. Speaker, has the mandate to take that message.
As we have been talking about here this afternoon, our most fervent desires that we can put together, that collective cause, that collective purpose, set aside our differences and carry that message to our nation's capital.
Mr. Speaker, I have talked to or asked questions a few days ago, at the start of the session, in fact, about the negotiation itself, that we are engaged or we are presuming to be engaged in with Mr. Andre, the negotiator with Ottawa's authority on this one. That, indeed, has been a question and a concern of mine, Mr. Speaker. Just what authority, what mandate is Mr. Andre bringing to the table here? I was going over the record of the Premier's answers to me from last Monday and it is not apparent there that indeed Mr. Andre is bringing to the table the authority from his bosses in Ottawa to negotiate the bundle, the full meal deal, Mr. Speaker, that we know we want to go forward on and that is a devolution, a resource responsibility to the North and to our governments along with the wealth, the resource royalty sharing agreement.
It's a concern because I was not able to get from the Premier's answers that Mr. Andre does indeed have the authority and the mandate from Ottawa to get a deal on both of these critical areas.
Mr. Speaker, while we have seen numerous efforts by other governments from Canada to do this, I, too, want to give the new Conservative regime a reasonable chance to get this deal done. Indeed, Mr. Prentice and Mr. Harper have said more definitively and clearly than any other of their counterparts that this is something they realize can and should be done. But without the real nuts and bolts mandate, without giving Mr. Andre the toolbox to do this, I must admit I am sceptical that we are engaged in a series of negotiations that really amounts to anything more than we had before.
I do continue to put confidence and optimism into this, but it is going to be the proof, of course, that I will be looking for and every one of us will be looking for to show that we are not just engaged in another chapter of the never ending story. We really are going to get to a deal.
Mr. Speaker, it's been said here before, but I think it's worth underlining, that our dispute here is not with the developers, the miners, the builders, the drillers, the people who want to build and own pipelines here in the Northwest Territories. Those are shareholders, those are companies, those are corporations that have taken risk. They have put their dollars on the table in good faith in the hope that they are going to get a return; some of them have, some of them haven't, Mr. Speaker. All you have to do is look at my meagre portfolio to show that there is still risk money out here on the ground in the NWT that just might not get a return on the investment. That is part of our economy and part of the way we work up here. So we do not want to curb or stem or choke off that flow of risk money that's gong into the exploration and the continuing development. But as we have said so many different ways this afternoon, there must come a point, there must be a time when we will say to ourselves, for ourselves, for the benefit of ourselves and our children, that we have got to see something in it for us.
Mr. Speaker, I think there is an assumption made, at least in southern circles and maybe in the bureaucracy that we talked about: What the heck is the matter with those guys in the NWT in that big pink part of the map that can't look after themselves? They are getting all this money from us, from the southern taxpayers already. They sound like a bunch of crabby whiners up there. Why don't they get with the picture?
Mr. Speaker, what is essential between us and most other jurisdictions in Canada is that we do not have that control over the pace and style of development. We do not have a share of the cycle of wealth as it flows out of the ground through corporate hands, through taxation hands and through governments. That is something that is missing in this gap here and it's something we want, Mr. Speaker. We want the responsibility to handle the obligations that come with resource management. We don't have that right now. As has already been said here this afternoon, we are on a fixed income, but the pressures and the consequences of the kind of wealth and the kind of activity that we have around here are hobbling us. They are slowing us down and it's very much, Mr. Speaker, part of the frustration that you are seeing here this afternoon and I think what you are seeing in many other corners of the Northwest Territories. Just what is the benefit of this pace of development, triple that of Alberta's of the past six years? What is in it for us? That's the question that you want to get an answer to.
Mr. Miltenberger this afternoon, I listened with great attention and very strong agreement at the message he was delivering to the Assembly, his passion and concern with the environment. Mr. Speaker, that is very much a tie in with the motion in what we are trying to achieve today. We have many other people dictating and deciding the kinds of development that is going to go on up here and the pace of development. How are we going to obtain the control over the environment that Mr. Miltenberger so eloquently pleads for? We have got to bring that home. We have got to bring that into the Northwest Territories and do what Mr. Miltenberger is advocating which is to integrate all of those decisions so we can come up with something that's economically and socially and environmentally responsible. How can we hope to attain that when all these different decisions are being made at different times in different venues and we are quite removed from it?
Mr. Speaker, the last point I wanted to make is to the timing that we have suggested in our motion. Earlier today, the Premier answered some questions for me about that. He is suggesting that the end of the fiscal year is when we should be trying to resolve that. I don't want to argue against that, Mr. Speaker, but it's rather bureaucratic and a process and systemic kind of time frame. The motion that we put forward was crafted, Mr. Speaker, with the idea that it was going to be by the time of the next federal budget, normally in February as the deadline we should seek. We've already been told, Mr. Speaker, that on a few fronts, especially our formula financing one, that we are gong to have to wait until the federal budget to find out what Ottawa wants to do with us.
I would suggest that if there are going to be any fiscal agreements made in our negotiations that we are going to see the proof of that and the delivery of that will begin, we hope and pray it will begin, at least with the coming of the next federal budget. That is an explanation for why we chose that time frame. That is a political tipping point, if you will, Mr. Speaker, that will really show what the new Conservative government is indeed prepared to commit to and take to the floor of the House of Parliament to get approval for.
Mr. Speaker, the longer we choose not to get together on this to form that unified approach, to link arms and take our case to Ottawa with and among aboriginal leaders as well as this government, the more we stand to lose, Mr. Speaker. I am going to put the ultimate responsibility and authority for delivering this deal to northerners with Ottawa, but we also have our responsibility to demonstrate that across the board as we go about this Northwest Territories is going to run, not just next year but for generations to come. It is ours to lose, Mr. Speaker, if we don't put ourselves together and act as one. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause