Firstly, I’d point out to the Member for Tu Nedhe it’s not they, it’s us that sit around this table. Every Member in this House, including the Member for Tu Nedhe and myself as the Member for Thebacha, that we are
representing the people of the Northwest Territories at this public government table. The Member is suggesting that we have decades of problems that could be tied to the fact that we don’t control a lot of our own decisions. We didn’t take over health, forestry and those types of things until the mid-‘80s, but that it may be better to stick with the devil we know than to be able to say that we’re finally ready to stand up as Northerners to take on responsibility.
I would suggest to all the Members here and the people of the Northwest Territories, that we can’t do things any worse, and if we make mistakes, they’ll be our mistakes that we can fix, that we control. We will control the decisions. We will not be sitting here with bated breath waiting to find out what they’re going to regulatory reform and what they’re going to all the land claim agreements with the boards that were set up and not have any say.
We have one of the most decentralized governments in the country and if that design is not appropriate, then we can change it. If we want to have discussions about how do we handle water, what type of resource development, what do we mean by sustainability, we have those discussions right now but we don’t control the decision. We can talk about it until we’re blue in the face and come up with all sorts of principles and put those on a shelf and hold them up, but the final decision is not ours. That’s the benefit to us.
We cannot turn our back any further, I believe, having sat in this House for 16 years and listened to the constant concerns and need for more money on the hundreds of millions of dollars that are currently left on the table that are not retroactive. Just think what we could have done with a quarter of a billion dollars to add to our operations and maintenance, or to our capital funds. That money will never be spent. Yet we will all stand up in the most passionate way and make the case for the housing needs in our communities, for the roads, for the health services, for the addictions services. Yet at the same time we’re prepared to say that $200 million can just stay on the table. We won’t take it but we’ll sit here and complain about the doggone government not giving us enough money. At what point do we say let’s seize our own future and make those decisions? Let’s realize those resources and set up the structures of governance that every other province can do but we can’t. Thank you.