Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Very briefly, I want to say how important the economy is in the Northwest Territories and the opportunities and benefits that this project will bring directly to the people in the Mackenzie Valley in the Northwest Territories in terms of moving the economy and that
we certainly need, through this process, a need for a balance between the water, air and land and extracting resources from our land.
Mr. Chairman, this whole process is like a big octopus, there are so many legs all over you have to pull things together. What is more important, in terms of coordinating all these different boards and agencies and the different needs of the people down the Mackenzie Valley, they certainly spent a lot of money putting a report together, they heard a lot of people. I believe the budget was over $20 million for this stage here.
One of the most important things that I wanted to mention, Mr. Speaker, is that the people want to see our land use plans completed in the Mackenzie Valley. That’s very important. That’s very key to this project here. So I would support a strong implementation of all the land use plans that were developed through the Mackenzie Valley here and that first and foremost that our culture as people is protected, which I make note, Mr. Chairman, that our culture is our land. So that’s number one in the hearts of the people here.
Mr. Chairman, I just want to say that we’ve come a long way from the 1940s when the CANOL Pipeline was constructed from Norman Wells to Whitehorse. It took 30,000 men and 13 months and it was done. In the 1980s we had a pipeline being built even though there was opposition. The pipeline did go through. There were certainly missed opportunities in terms of training and business for the people along the valley. Now, today, I think we learned enough to know what things are important to us; for example, as it’s stated in the recommendations. So I look forward to seeing how these recommendations are going to be moved along.
There are some tight deadlines in terms of working with the aboriginal governments, looking at some of the boards and agencies. Certainly, looking at the land claims, the land owners, and areas that need to be protected.
Mr. Chairman, the lessons we learned are right in our backyard in the Sahtu, in the Norman Wells oil and gas field with the Enbridge Pipeline. You can count on your hand how many people have been hired over the years with Imperial Oil, or maybe two hands, I should say, and what type of a record they have in terms of employment, training programs, environmental issues that we still face today in terms of the monitoring and the quality of our water and our air around the areas. We should really look at that in terms of getting a little stronger in terms of going forward with this initiative here.
I want to say that I look forward to this government here working on some of the recommendations. They are under a tight time frame in terms of some of the recommendations, but I will be supporting this government and the Minister in terms of moving this forward. The pipeline is an important economic
initiative for the people in the Mackenzie Valley; however, we need to make sure that our land use plans are done, they’re finished, and they’re enacted and implemented as soon as possible. Thank you.