Mr. Speaker, there's a whole process, and if it takes a weekend, if Mr. Hawkins wants, I'll explain to him how all these pieces fit together. But there are many pieces, Mr. Speaker, that are beyond the authority of this government. We don't decide access and benefit agreements for the aboriginal communities and leaders. They decide that themselves. I can't reference that in my letter.
Mr. Speaker, it frustrates me when people purposely take a letter and read something that isn't there. I look at it and I say, okay, what we've said is we are going to maintain a post-devolution royalty regime for three anchor fields. That's in order to give the company some assurance before they spend $7.5 plus billion on a pipeline. Let's give them some assurance.
Mr. Speaker, we say we're not going to increase taxes for the pipeline assets disproportionately to property taxes to similar properties anywhere in Canada. We're going to be competitive. That's exactly what we said in Mr. Roland's budget speech. We're going to be competitive in Canada. Mr. Speaker, we said we are not going to directly have any tax affect that would directly target the Mackenzie gas project. That's exactly the way we treat every business in the Northwest Territories. We don't target businesses and put taxes on specific projects. We're just giving them assurances that we're good, responsible people to work with. Mr. Speaker, the other is that this doesn't include everything. We've said corporate taxes; we're going to work with you to negotiate and arrangement on corporate taxes, and we're going to do that by June 2006.
Mr. Speaker, those are all fair and reasonable positions taken by our government to say we are responsible. To top it all off, Mr. Speaker, we have said that this letter is a subject through the plenary legislative authority of the NWT Legislative Assembly, and that it does not...There's nothing in this letter -- and I'll read from it, this is tabled -- "...nothing in this letter constitutes a legally binding commitment or obligation of the GNWT or confers any right on your companies." This is a letter of comfort, Mr. Speaker. It's not a contract. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.