It’s my opinion that the majority of Northerners are represented at the table for the AIP and that we are fully committed to working with the other Aboriginal governments to hopefully get them to come on board. The time is far past where Northerners should have their fate in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians that live thousands of kilometres away and we will accept a second-class status as Canadians when 99.9 percent of this population of this country has the authority to control their destiny when it comes to land, water, and resource development. Yet we sit here mired down decade after decade where we have a government thousands of miles away running the key decision-making processes that we all complain about. That’s the issue.
This process is clear. We have an opportunity to bring everybody on board. There’s money that’s still there to carry on the side table discussions that the Member is talking about. The expectation I believe of Northerners is that it is time for us to take control of our own destiny here, to make decisions about resource development.
Two-hundred million dollars we’ve left on the table, another $60 million this year. We sit in this House day after day talking about all the resources we need to do things, to build treatment centres, to put in houses, to do all the other things. Yet we’re content to sit here as an Assembly in the North, to keep turning our backs on the opportunity to have the resources and authority that other Canadians take for granted. That’s not acceptable anymore, in my opinion. We’re coming forward with the resources to move this process forward in a very careful, measured, inclusive way.