Mr. Speaker, the issue of water and the motion, it's hard not to support a motion such as this that is so vital to an individual, whether in this country, in this territory or in another country in the world, we are blessed with an abundance of it. You look in other countries and the fact is they're drilling in desserts to try to find fresh water. We've become an inventive race because we're taking sea water, salt water, and trying to make it into drinkable water for our own use.

Mr. Speaker, back to the home front, I can recall as a child travelling with my parents on the Mackenzie River, on the Beaufort Sea when we hunted and we trapped. Whether it was the summer or the winter, it brings back a lot of memories, as I said earlier, about what value we place in this precious resource. I recall many times travelling with my father, with my parents and stopping on the shore and having shore lunch, and as we heard earlier, making that pot of coffee or that pot of tea and have to wait for the water to settle because you didn't want to get all of the sand and the mud with it. At least from my end of the country, we got everything that floated down river it seemed. So some places where the water is blue, that same water isn't quite as blue when you go further down, and it goes to the earlier comment about we can't control it all. So it's something that we have to take seriously.

As I recall not only from that, but my interest grew from there of being interested in tourism and it brought me a lot of joy when I took people out as part of our small family tourism outfit, brought them out on the water, showed them the land we travelled and told them stories about my father and the way he lived and hunted on this land and this great resource we had. So it was that interest that I got involved and shared those stories with those that would come to visit with us. So that interest in my own culture and my own history and that of my father's of how he lived. I'll have to go back and quote -- and God bless his soul -- a colleague of ours that has passed on, Mr. Vince Steen. He's been in the media in the past of something he said and it's so very true, the fact that no matter how much we try, we will never get back to how we lived 30 or 40 years ago. That's something that we have to take into consideration as we have this discussion, as we plan and as we make decisions as we talk about what kind of legislation we would bring in place. So it's with that in mind we must also think about our past and how our past has prepared us for our future. I got involved talking about my past, involved at a grassroots level, and that was with the Inuvik Hunters and Trappers Committee and, again, with my father's history and the history of our people in the North of looking at things as they were changing. Back when my father talked about when he went travelling on the east branch of the Mackenzie River and when he went muskrat hunting in the spring and as he travelled back to his camp he travelled with an 18-foot canoe with a one and a half horsepower motor. Well today, nowadays, Mr. Speaker, you'll see young people travelling with 150 horsepower outboard motors, truck engines, what they would have never thought be inside boats, jet boats, snowmobiles that will travel more than 100 miles an hour. Mr. Speaker, that shows how things have changed and how we even as our own people in our own backyards, never mind everybody else, but in our own backyards we make decisions that affect the very lives that our children will live.

So it was with that interest as a member of the hunters and trappers that got involved with the issues that were before us and when there was discussions about land use, how we used, how we hunted and how we operated and how we were as a people. Let's not forget, water brings us life, Mr. Speaker, but it also can bring death in a number of areas, not only from drinking it, but from travelling on it. That just showed us the standards of life

we had in the Northwest Territories and that we hold today. So it's even with that, it's not just the drinking of it, it's how we use it day to day and the respect we must have for our land and the water that we travel and live with.

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about managing it, it's something we have to know at this level, at this table, on this floor. We talk about managing, and that's why we, as a government, and past governments got involved in that decision-making, in land use plan and what we had to do as a government. So let's not forget about the changes that have occurred in our society and the laws that have been put in place, because today, Mr. Speaker, today we will not have another Giant Mine situation occurring in the Northwest Territories. Today we'll not have uranium mines built in the conditions they were.

Mr. Speaker, past decisions by other people have caused us to be burdened with some sad history in how we try to protect our future. I've heard Mr. Miltenberger on a number of occasions talk about the millions of tons of arsenic buried right under this fine city we call the capital of the Northwest Territories. So we must look at that and how those decisions are made and how we get involved in making those decisions. Also, as our Premier stated, we must be realistic in what we can accomplish as one jurisdiction, as one territory. We, in the North, have been impacted by people who have made decisions for us, by decisions made further south. Right from the earliest days, before the creation of the Northwest Territories, when the trappers or the hunters came forward to take our furs in a sense of not only using them for sustaining your life from day to day, but to make it a valuable resource. I recall my father telling me stories about when the first trappers and traders came up. It wasn't about no matter how many muskrat pelts or how many beaver pelts that you got and they said if you wanted that rifle you get to trade a few. As they brought some in and said well this is enough, the trader would turn his rifle up lengthwise and say no, you have to match the height of the barrel. That's how things started happening in the Northwest Territories.

So as we sit around this table and we begin to take more and more control of what we have in the Northwest Territories, we have take into consideration our past and how those decisions were made and how we're affected by that and how we will make the decisions moving forward. We've had others tell us how it can be done, and how it must be done and I've just given that example of how things were done in the past and how they can no longer be done in the Northwest Territories. But we must also be very aware we in the Northwest Territories are not an island unto ourselves and we don't live in a bubble. Everything that happens within Canada affects us. I remember as a young man when I first heard the discussion of acid rain I thought to myself living in the Northwest Territories blue skies, clear water, fresh air to breathe, how can that be happening? Not here in the Northwest Territories. But as I did more research and looking at it finding out the impacts of the rest of this country have on us in the Northwest Territories. So it's trying to sit back and say we can make it happen here in the Northwest Territories. We can have an impact and we can help make some decisions or help those that make decisions understand the situations we live in.

So we have our jobs cut out for us, Mr. Speaker, on how we move forward and what we need to do as a government, but we also have to realize we've come a long way in a short time. The rest of Canada, the rest of the world has taken a long time, generations, to change the way they've done things and the decisions they've made. We can do it and we can have an impact this very day in how we do things, not only by making this motion, which is a good one, but it's how we move forward from there and how we influence the decision-makers in the rest of the country and how we hold them accountable. We can talk about holding ourselves accountable but, like I said, we don't live in a bubble and we don't control how the water flows in and out of the Northwest Territories. We can have a say, but its how much of that say gets translated into decision-making by other jurisdictions. So we have to be realistic in what we set as examples, but the truth is, we have to start standing up and saying our piece and being heard at all levels, not only at the regional level and the territorial level, but letting the rest of Canada hear us and what we say and the directions we need to have set that will impact us on a daily basis. With that, I will be supporting the motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause