Thank you, Mr. Chair. First and foremost, we’ve been working very hard for the last 14 or 15 months on the Water Strategy. Between ourselves and INAC we’re going to have spent, by the time we’re finished, about $800,000 to do this what I believe will be the best of its kind Water Strategy in the country that will give us all the key principles and elements of a comprehensive water strategy of what’s required right from the groundwater, surface water and everywhere in between; precipitation, flows, the whole complex area of water. It will give us the best policy base to go forward to negotiate our bilateral with the Mackenzie River Basin Transboundary Agreement which, while it is not perfect, is the only instrument we do have.
The $65,000 is our share that we put in along with money put in by Yukon, Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C., and ourselves. We have been saying now, since we got elected and we’re trying to have a meeting with the Mackenzie River Basin Board, that we should be at least increasing our contribution by half, if not double -- every jurisdiction -- to give the
Mackenzie River Basin Board the resources to do business. They operate now, and have since 1997, on a budget of about just a shade over a quarter-million dollars a year, which, given the magnitude of the river basin, one of the biggest in North America, is a very miniscule amount of money.
We recognize that there’s a need to rejuvenate the Mackenzie River Basin Board and that’s one of our key intents. We’ve raised water at every meeting we’ve been at. We’ve had a partial meeting of the Mackenzie River Basin Board to try to get them together when I was in Whitehorse recently. We couldn’t get all the members there, but I talked to Minister Renner and he indicated, yes, we do have to gather.
I just want to assure the Member...He uses the phrase “cave in completely to Alberta.” I can assure the Member that our intention is to take all the steps necessary to protect the interests of the Northwest Territories. One of the reasons we’re going to be effective at this is because we’re going to have spent the time and money on a good strategy. We are going to have, as our strategy is titled, Northern Voices on Northern Water. We intend and hope to have all the aboriginal governments with us, shoulder to shoulder, as we look at the transboundary issues we have to deal with. We will be negotiating with these folks in Alberta and in B.C. and in Saskatchewan.
Very clearly we recognize now, more than we did in 1997, the complexity of the whole issue of water and we looked at things that have been done around the world. I’ve read information about what’s happened in the Nile with the seven countries trying to negotiate water agreements, bilaterals versus multilaterals, things that have taken hundreds of years, wars that have been fought over this issue. So we recognize very clearly, as a downstream jurisdiction, that we have an enormous responsibility. We are going to discharge that, we believe, effectively. Thank you.