Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to briefly speak about this motion as well. We don’t often get a chance to talk in this House and have a discussion where we can exchange thoughts. Generally we talk in a very

specific, often high-minded way about the environment. I think we all share a common concern. It is one of our key principles. There has been a wide ranging discussion here today that has touched on water, cumulative impacts, being residents of the Mackenzie Basin, the need for integrated watershed management, but this motion, as well, speaks very specifically to how we currently do business.

As we have heard from some of my colleagues, we are spending tens of millions of dollars to limit our reliance on fossil fuels. We are going to make significant and I hope long-term commitments to getting all the diesel communities onto some other type of energy within the next, hopefully, five years or so. It is a very ambitious agenda. We are not stopping with that. We are looking at recycling. We are looking at all the other things we can do that are energy efficient.

When we look to our southern borders, while we have strong concerns about what is being done, Alberta is not our enemy. Alberta is our neighbour. We have to work together to come up with the best way possible to protect the Mackenzie River basin watershed. We have to work together to make sure that we have the best plan possible for the tar sands.

Like it or not, we are going to be reliant on oil for some time, probably the rest of our normal living lives here as we look to the future unless something dramatic is discovered. In the meantime, as legislators, as the heads of government, as ones making decisions for our people, we have to be aware of all the things that are happening around us. We have to be aware that sometimes political action may have implementation consequences that we have to be cognizant of. While this is only a recommendation to government and there is work to be done, we do have to be aware of the implications should we choose or should the direction be to proceed down a path.

California is a trend setter, but California and the Northwest Territories is probably 70 degrees difference from their hottest day to our coldest. We have to be sensitive to that. As my colleague Minister Michael McLeod indicated, this is a very complex issue. It will benefit us to know as much as possible. I would suggest a lot of the information on the second part of the motion about the lifecycle analysis, greenhouse gas emissions, when we look at where we are buying our product from, that information would be available. I don’t think we are going to have to reinvent the wheel or spend a lot of our scarce resources doing that kind of research.

Our job I think in the long term is to get us off fuel. I think the plan that we laid out with the alternative energy and all the work we do with hydro, biomass,

geothermal, wind in those areas are going to pay us the big dividends. In the meantime, for those buildings that we are going to continue to heat, we are looking at building standards and all the things necessary to minimize that use.

I think we all want the same thing. We have committed just through this budget passed in this House a couple of days ago for us massive investment I would suggest that no other jurisdiction is doing. We are going to soon have a Water Strategy that no other jurisdiction will have that will give us the foundation, the policy base to sit down and negotiate the bilaterals with Alberta, with B.C., with Saskatchewan and it will give us the foundation to go to the federal/provincial/territorial table to make the case for a national water strategy. Once again, that is a very fundamental, probably the most fundamental issue that is before us. We don’t want to lose sight of that fact.

This latest effort to focus our attention, our political energy, is there. We just have to be careful on how it could be applied or the application that could result from this. I do believe, as Mr. Hawkins said, that this Assembly has embarked upon probably, if I may use the word, the greenest path of any Assembly that I have been involved in the last four Assemblies. Thank you.