Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to the whole devolution process I don’t think we really have had an opportunity to have a discussion on it publicly in the format of this House or Committee of the Whole. I think that we do have to give it due diligence and make sure that we do have some discussion on it.
I believe that devolution has been a long time coming, but at what cost are we willing to proceed. I think the challenge we face, the agreement that we have in front of us, the question is did we get an agreement simply for the sake of getting an agreement or have we got the best agreement we could possibly achieve within the time and resources we put into it.
I think it’s important that we have an agreement that covers all bases, includes the First Nations groups and the people who are affected, endorsing an agreement that will at the end of the day put a
financial burden on future governments of the Northwest Territories, and ensuring that we adequately fund this transfer to the required expenditure that we’re going to need going forward.
I think it’s important to realize that previous Legislatures have had these discussions and I have myself been personally involved in the negotiations of what was called the Northern Accord. At that time all Aboriginal governments were at the table. They did have their own legal counsel. They were able to negotiate and look at the different elements of how they were going to be affected. How the agreements that were negotiated during the Dene/Metis land claim agreements. I again have to stipulate that the Dene/Metis were not able to achieve what’s in the Inuvialuit Agreement, elements such as participation agreements which clearly outline the obligation of industry, whether it’s oil and gas or mining, to deal with the First Nations people in those particular settlement regions. As part of that, the Dene/Metis insisted during the negotiation of the Dene/Metis claim, which is now better known as the modern treaties or regional claims, that we had to clearly specifically identify those arrangements through what we called the Northern Accord agreement. That’s why it’s important to understand that in 1988 when the Northern Accord agreement was signed by then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the Government of the Northwest Territories in 1988 it was signed in August, I think it was 18
th
or 20
th
, in which that
morning it was signed by the Government of the Northwest Territories and that afternoon they signed the Dene/Metis agreement-in-principle in Rae-Edzo. The whole understanding was those two arrangements would go hand in hand in light of the Northern Accord process, the Dene/Metis agreement, and ensure that those two arrangements would be clearly stipulated and flowed through the different land claims agreements. Part of the land claims agreements was clearly demonstrated that in negotiation of those agreements it clearly stipulated that the Government of the Northwest Territories shall involve those Aboriginal groups in development and implementation of the Northern Accord Oil and Gas Agreement which was signed September 5, 1988, by Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories.
Again it’s clearly illustrated that you have to include those Aboriginal governments in whatever you do going forward. Because they do have not only treaty obligations and modern treaty obligations that we as a government have to ensure that they’re included in those processes where we’ve clearly stipulated that they shall be involved in those whole processes.
We also have to look at the needs of not only the northern residents but Aboriginal residents in the confines of the self-government agreements. I know
when I was at the table in 1995 with the Gwich’in Tribal Council in negotiation of those discussions, the issue did come to the table on the funding of self-government agreements. I think it’s important that we do have the resources to fund and top-up self-government agreements, because right now, realizing the cost of running programs and services, the land claims agreements as I stated right now to negotiate self-government agreements you can only negotiate for existing programs and services and the government will only agree to fund them as they presently exist.
By way of future growth and population growth, we’re looking at the area of additional resources. The only other place that you can identify those additional resources is either through tax revenues or revenues that flow from royalties. I think it’s important to realize that we have to be able to fundamentally agree that we have to ensure that the fiscal arrangement that we agree to is sound and that it will be able to take us well into the future. Even in regard to the overall government obligations that we’re looking at by taking over those different powers from the federal government by way of positions and also taking over the obligations regardless whether they’re regulatory obligations or legislative obligations on mining regulations, oil and gas regulations, in regard to the Waters Act. We are looking at taking over the responsibility of governments on all of those elements and I think it’s important to realize that whatever we do, we have to have the resources to do it.
In previous assessments done by previous government that at that time the assessment that they did they stated that they needed some $83 million to take on those federal-type obligations; $83 million. Yet at that time the federal government was offering us $62 million, which we identified was not appropriate to take on those obligations.
The other aspect was also in the area of the cap. Previous agreements did not include a cap and also they included and insisted that Norman Wells had to be part of any negotiations going forward. Again, we see that the federal government has put a cap on the arrangement that we’re looking at and they also include the federal government’s share of the one-third ownership of the Norman Wells oilfield, which is excluded. The one-third share of the Norman Wells oilfield yields some $100 million a year to the federal government at the present projections that are out there. Again, by leaving that to the federal government really undermines the ability for the Northwest Territories to go forward in regard to the fiscal and future growth and costs associated with delivering those programs and services to residents of the Northwest Territories.
As we see, one fire season in the Northwest Territories could almost take half of that $60 million
and swallow it up by a bad fire season. I think we’ve got to be conscious that basically whatever arrangement we agree with going forward does have the arrangements and clearly stipulates that we are benefitting from our resources, that we’re not simply signing the agreement to say, well, we’re going to transfer programs and services to the Northwest Territories and now it’s your problem.
I think we should learn from the Yukon experience in which one of the biggest challenges they faced when they transferred that from the federal government to the Yukon government was just basically trying to bring in line the benefits by way of employment benefits and employee wages from the federal classification of their employees to the territorial government classification, which again, that cost them an additional $10 million which wasn’t part of the original amount that they looked at in regard to allowing for that transfer to take place.
Again, we are no different here and I think, if anything, probably things have gotten a little more rigid with the different court cases that have happened in regard to the overall area that deals with the pay equity case that took place between the federal employees. You’re taking on those obligations now, and, again, we have to be conscious that those obligations we are taking on do not hinder us going forward into the future.
I think also realizing that we do have some major, major projects on the outcome such as, let’s say, the Mackenzie pipeline, major oil and gas deposits that could bring in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenues, and again, having a cap in place will very much undermine our abilities to really receive the majority of those revenues to the people of the Northwest Territories.
Again, I think it’s important that we do take the time to review this arrangement and also allow the public to have a say in where we’re going in regard to this arrangement.