Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, with 4,700 employees, we are delivering services in communities that are needed. In fact, I think if you polled most Members in here, one of the jobs you see is trying to secure good jobs in your communities so you can have some good levels of employment. So I think there is some debate at that one. If they are all sitting around waiting for us to give them a sign to walk outside and say deliver our message. I think, when you look at it, the numbers have been provided as to what we do with our staff, the kind of jobs that are being done and what we have repatriated within government that was done outside of government before. In the area of contracting and speech writing, some departments do have their internal staff in place; some don't. In Finance, we did not have. Each Minister, if he feels that he needs to get additional resources to the table or a special expert field to the table, they can consider that. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Oral questions. The honourable Member for the Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up with Mr. McLeod's questions to the Premier in terms of the Northwest Territories. Once a year or more, we get up to pound on our chests and see how we want Ottawa to deal with us and handle our issues such as resource revenue sharing and devolution. I want to ask the Premier, can he tell the good people of the Northwest Territories? I know he said 20 years is long enough. Thirty years is long enough in terms of negotiating a resource revenue sharing deal or devolution. What is it that we can do in the Northwest Territories in light of what obstacles that we are facing as a small territory and number of people? What is it that we can do in terms of getting Ottawa's attention? Certainly, what we are doing right now is not working.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The honourable Premier, Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wouldn't give up and say that what we are doing is not working. We have to recognize that this takes a long time. If I look at Alberta, in Alberta's case, they became a province in 1905 and I believe it was 1931 before they got resource revenue sharing. They stayed in there. They stayed the course and they went for a good deal. Don't accept any deal, but wait for a good deal. I think we have to do the same. Mr. Speaker, we could have accepted a deal that would have been bad for us years ago if we wanted to, but we are not going to do that. We are entitled to be the primary beneficiary.

Mr. Speaker, what we are doing is being consistent. We have to stay together. We need the aboriginal leaders onside and all of the other municipal leaders. We need everybody, all 19 of us as MLAs and stay consistent. I think elections, as I mentioned before, will give us a great opportunity to express our views but we have to keep making the argument. Canadians are hearing it now more than they ever have before. I tell you, not just government leaders support us, but I think Canadians support us now. Everything we do will work. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I certainly agree with the Premier. We have come a long way in the last 20 or 30 years, but when I hear my colleagues and Members and I read the papers in terms of the amount of resources leaving this good land of ours and all of the resources that are still being taken today as we speak, it sickens my stomach that we are still crying for RCMP officers in isolated communities, health care issues and education issues. We are a small number of people, but we have a huge land mass. It is a crying shame that today in this society here that we still are knocking on the door. I support the Premier in terms of whatever we can do. Again, I ask the Premier, would he look at some type of action plan that we can do in terms of shaking the heads of the bureaucrats and politicians in Ottawa to say enough is enough? What types of options or plans can the Premier provide to this government? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We have looked at everything. We have looked at whether or not it is possible to force the issue. We can't. We don't have the authority right now to do that. We need the devolution deal to be able to do that. We have looked at other ways of trying to negotiate some interim arrangement where they would give us advances. That hasn't worked.

Mr. Speaker, the current process that we are using right now, the steps we are taking is, number one, to continue to get this message out across the country. People probably get tired of hearing me talk about resource revenue sharing and devolution, but we have to stay the course on that one. Every opportunity, whether it is in Toronto or Northwest Territories or wherever, we keep to that message. Mr. Speaker, I don't miss an opportunity to meet with the Prime Minister, the Minister of DIAND or any Minister to talk about this. Mr. Speaker, we are

working together as a team with aboriginal leaders who are increasing the understanding and importance of this.

Two hundred twenty-four million dollars left the Territories in 2005-06. Half of that at least should have been ours. I am going to continue along that path. If there are other good ideas on how we can improve on the strategy we have, then I would certainly appreciate hearing them. The main thing is we cannot throw in the towel on this. We have to stay together on it and we have to stay on the course with this. Do what Alberta did even if it takes 25 years, but I don't intend to take that. I want to see an agreement-in-principle. I am meeting with the Minister of DIAND and hopefully with the aboriginal leaders in April again to deal with this, among other issues. We will just continue with that course. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I will again encourage all Members of this House. Whenever you have the opportunity, talk about the resource revenue sharing issue in the Northwest Territories. Mr. Speaker, Alberta has negotiated a good deal in 30 years. I think we should sit down with Alberta and see how we can help them. We have to do something. Mr. Speaker, the Premier said it very clearly. We do not have the authority. That is a key point. What can we do to get some authority that will say, what is ours is ours and what is Ottawa's is Ottawa's? Thank you

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That authority is going to come through a devolution agreement. That is what devolution means. So we have to, as a territory, work together. Mr. Speaker, we can talk about doing it through aboriginal claims and self-governments, but really, if we are going to be one territory, we have to have devolution. I think everybody agrees we need to stick together as one territory. Mr. Speaker, we will continue the path we are on and persist at every opportunity we have. Again, Mr. Speaker, if there are other things we should or could be doing, then I am certainly open to hearing those as well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Oral questions. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to continue questions directed towards the Minister of ENR. Mr. Speaker, as I rose in my Member's statement today about issues such as why are we discussing the light bulb issue, the plastic bag issue, the low-flow toilet issue? Mr. Speaker, what is the problem for the Minister of ENR to have these types of discussions? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Speaker, we encourage the discussion on energy reduction. It's something that's certainly at the forefront of everybody's minds. We've had a lot of discussion at this forum here over the last several days about how the climate is changing and how water is being affected by the use of energy and resource development. Mr. Speaker, I think we all recognize that we're entering into a new era. We've taken all our initiatives and reviewed them and we've updated them and we've added a lot of new actions. We've added a lot of review that has been required to be done. We are looking at the new announcements that have been made by the federal government. We're packaging all this up and we'll provide it to the Members, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Supplementary, Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, I'll give credit where credit is due to the Minister of ENR, because we certainly saved a lot of energy by doing nothing, Mr. Speaker. So the fact is why can't we get out there and have this type of discussion, Mr. Speaker? Why can Vancouver have bylaws that we could be doing here in legislation? Why is the Minister afraid of having these discussions? Would he commit to getting out there and having some discussion papers out there, talking to people about real energy saving plans that everybody can buy into? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as indicated before, our energy plan and our Greenhouse Gas Strategy will be released next week. I'm sure that will stimulate a lot of discussion, Mr. Speaker, and if these documents fall short of what the targets are by the people of the Northwest Territories, I'm sure that will generate some discussion around providing legislation. At this point, we are looking at what we can do in terms of what the government can do to reduce energy consumption, what's out there and alternate energy, what we can do with the residents, what we can do with the homes. All these types of issues are being addressed and looked at. Legislation is not something that we're ready to do at this point. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Villeneuve. Sorry. Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the time has come to the point where the wait-and-see approach, we cannot live by that example anymore. Mr.

Speaker, we need to have discussions today. We should have had them yesterday and we definitely should have been thinking about these things years ago. What is the big issue about having discussions about getting rid of those non-recyclable bottles out there, getting rid of the plastic bags and replacing them with plastic containers? Mr. Speaker, what is the problem and the hurdle that stops the Minister from opening up those type of public discussions? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Mr. McLeod.