Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. [Translation] Mr. Speaker, today I’m happy for the people here. Since I have been a kid, I’ve been brought up on the land. The federal government has been our boss, the way we trap, the way we hunt, the way we survive on the land, the animals we kill. If we should shoot a moose or something, we were on the tagging system before. It’s a long way we’ve gone from those days.

We people sitting here, with the agreement that we are signing today, the people who are going to be sitting here after we are here, are going to be the boss of themselves. Right now the federal government is running business for us. There are people in Toronto, there are about 10,000 of them who all come together and they are the ones who talk for us. They are the boss of us from over there. Who’s drilling, mineral exploration, looking for oil, these are the people who are our bosses.

Today, with the agreement we’ve made, we people from the cold here, from the North, we live together and we should be the boss of our own resources and the water. It wasn’t like that before. Should a job come up, it’s usually the people who come from the South to take over our jobs. The way the people are living here and the money that is here, the opportunities that we offer here, exploration for minerals, oil and gas exploration, it’s the people from the South who are running it. But today, by signing this agreement, some of the revenues will be coming to us here. With that money, we will work for the people. It’s not much money right now. The smaller communities, it’s not enough for everybody in the smaller communities, but there’s not that much work in the small communities. So we should be working. It’s hard to buy stuff. The federal government is taking care of everything for us and it’s not that much money that we are operating with.

Now, the federal government, with the money that is going to be handed to us upon the final agreement, working with the small communities, would probably benefit from it through jobs. Right now, it’s the people from down south who are running our business for us, the land, the water. We can’t have that anymore. Once we sign the agreement, by the way we are…for the numbers here, we will be talking for the people from inside here. We will be making our own decisions and people from the South will not be making those decisions for us. [Translation ends]

…I am contemplating here today because I believe control for resources and the regulatory regime that surrounds the resources, the extraction of non-renewable resources, should be in the hands of the people of the Northwest Territories. I think the water is a real major issue. The control of the water is something that will come to the Territories under this deal and that is essential. The control of the land, the decision-making on the renewable resources, the resource development that will come over. There will be a regulatory review that the government is going to retain control of in five years, and at that time, there’s a possibility that some or all of the regulatory process will move into the hands of the Government of the Northwest Territories.

I think this agreement is positive for employment across the territory. I think decentralization is a big part of devolution, and I think that all of the wages and individuals coming to work here in the Northwest Territories, whether they be in Yellowknife, the regional centres or the small communities, will be better than having those people working in Ottawa making those decisions. Just the multiplier effect of having the money spent in the Northwest Territories and the wages paid, that alone will benefit the people of the Northwest Territories. Infrastructure spending is going to benefit people of the Northwest Territories. We haven’t made a final decision on how we will spend our resource revenues from this agreement, should this agreement be finalized, but either way, it will benefit people immediately or it will benefit people of the Northwest Territories in the future. I support this motion.