Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am very pleased today to stand here and acknowledge Patrick Scott, the North's newest author. For cultures with an oral tradition, Mr. Speaker, storytelling is a particularly important way of passing on people's history. But I would like to congratulate Pat on the release of his book, "Stories Told: Stories and Images of the Berger Inquiry", published by the Edzo Institute.

Pat served as a CBC cameraman 30 years ago during the Berger Inquiry and his book recounts the incredible stories told to the Berger Inquiry about the land and the people, and his writings connect this historic event, Mr. Speaker, in a very timely way with the current debate and issues of the Mackenzie gas project. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to recognize the president of the UNW, Mr. Todd Parsons, a constituent of Great Slave; and Barb Wyness, public relations and research officer with the UNW. I believe I earlier saw a long-time family friend, Mr. Brad Enge in the Assembly, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

---Applause

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. In our May session a few months ago, I stood here to applaud the signing of an agreement-in-principle on devolution and resource revenue sharing. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to salute the vision and the leadership shown by the Gwich'in, the Metis, the Sahtu and the Inuvialuit leaders in joining with our government to present a unified approach to Canada on sharing the wealth of this great land. We should remind ourselves, again, Mr. Speaker, that that wealth amounts to some $750,000 every single day in the value of taxes and resource royalties that are going not into our pockets but into Ottawa's.

Mr. Speaker, we had, a few months ago, high hopes that Canada would actually see the signing of this agreement as real progress and we could actually have an AIP signed off, but that was not to be, as the Dehcho, Akaitcho and Tlicho governments have not signed on.

Mr. Speaker, in doing so, the North collectively gave Ottawa again the same excuse Ottawa has been able to use over and over to say no to us; that is that until we are unified, our quest for a real share of our resources is futile. Mr. Speaker, when are we going to figure this out? How can we come to accept that as different, special, unique, deserving and entitled as we all are in our separate governments and regions, we had this one dream, this one goal that we shared? When will we resolve that the only real power that we have is that of a clear, single voice demanding that we have a real share of the wealth coming out of the very ground we claim to be ours?

Perhaps the answer lies, Mr. Speaker, not in our meagre and limited political ability as proven by 20 years of futility. Perhaps it lies instead with the youth and artisans, the real visionaries of this territory, Mr. Speaker. I want to quote from a song that a young Dene woman named Leela Gilday wrote. She's a Juno Award winner and she just might have the answer. In three eloquent lines from a song called One Drum, she tells us: "We are speaking the truth to the people. We are marching to the beat of one drum."

We have tried for decades to do it. As politicians, we've failed. Perhaps Leela Gilday has the answer. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

A bit of the context to this, Madam Chair. Of course, parental break-up is prevalent everywhere. In the event that a child is removed from the parent that does have custody, we heard in our travels that, in some cases, the other parent, while they may be sort of separated and out of the household, could still be a very viable and a safe place for the apprehended child to go. I guess what we want to do is ask the Minister to clear the way. I think there are some barriers in place now that may prevent childcare workers from going to the separated non-custodial parent. We think that there is value in allowing a childcare worker to look at that as an option. It can be very painful for a non-custodial parent to see their child going to a non-related home because of some systemic problem. We think that this option should be made available. That is the purpose of the motion, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Minister examines the issue of involving non-custodial parents in caring for apprehended children and, if necessary, make required necessary and regulatory changes to allow child protection workers the discretionary powers to place apprehended children with the non-custodial parent on a temporary basis, providing it is in the best interest of the child. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Speaker. I am not going to support this motion. I do believe though in putting it forward, my colleague Mr. Ramsay and those who are supporting it, were putting something constructive on the floor here, Mr. Speaker. That is that the information requested in the motion is nothing more than four years ago in the debate. Okay, I'm getting there. The government should be very forthcoming in saying we will present the revised analysis. We will present the revised risk situations, the revised traffic numbers. Here is what we are willing to put in front of people. That has to be something that the government, at its peril, will not present to this Assembly and indeed to the public of the Northwest Territories.

Mr. Speaker, there is one part of the bill or of the motion that I do find troubling and it's on this basis that I find I cannot support it. The motion recommends that the government not enter into a binding agreement committing it to the Deh Cho project until it has provided Regular Members and the public with said information. If we say we do not want you to enter into a binding agreement until you have shown us the information, that still doesn't give us a veto or a say. The bill doesn't ask for that, but the signal that this motion sends out, Mr. Speaker, to financiers, to constructors, to regulators or anyone else involved in this project, is that we are putting it on hold again. We are putting it at political risk because of the upcoming election.

We need to keep the mandate alive for the government to continue to make this deal, but as I said and I want to underscore this very clearly and as emphatically as I can, we are old. Those new revisions, those new levels of risk that the government feels it can and should undertake on our behalf for this project. Do this and I think we will be able to proceed with confidence. But I am not prepared, Mr. Speaker, to ask the government, in effect, to put a stall on this project. I want to rewrite some history and I am not prepared to revisit the story that we've seen time and time again, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.

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I recently read that I think by 2012, something like 14,000 truckloads of material are going to be required compared to the 10,000 that went up this year. How much more in fees are we going to collect? Mr. Speaker, every year that that bridge is not built is that much revenue that is not going to be coming back into this project. Let's build it now.

---Interjection

Thank you very much.

---Laughter

...in the financing proposals. They are ideas, they aren't nailed down yet but they are ideas that have been put out there that will indeed enable Ottawa to come to the table for this project.

I asked the question a little while ago and my colleague Ms. Lee referenced the other visionary transportation projects that are before us now. One is a port and road project that would come down from the North that would, in effect, bypass the infrastructure we already have here. What would be seriously threatened if the signal that went up from this Assembly is we don't know about investing in this very significant piece of infrastructure across the Deh Cho River? So if we start rewriting another bad ending to this story, that's the signal we are going to be putting out. We are going to compromise this and my colleagues from north of Yellowknife or the North Slave region, the Tlicho, what chances are they going to get of roads that will connect to communities? We had better send a signal out to industry and the rest of Canada that we believe in ourselves, we believe in the future and this is one way of showing it.

---Applause

Mr. Speaker, I am more and more concerned about the environment conditions, climate change, that is going to erode the predictability, the security and the stability of the Mackenzie River crossing. We are facing more frequent, more surprised interruptions because of low water, because of ice conditions, combinations that are spilling, if not at least a nuisance and inconvenience, they are someday going to pose real hardship for the economy of this whole region as well as the safety of the travelling public and the crews on the Merv Hardie ferry. We may be compelled, for reasons beyond economics, to make sure there is that 24/7 connection.

Mr. Speaker, the mines are going to pay for this bridge. We are blessed to have that resource there and those

companies there that we will be able to put to work to pay for this bridge. If that bridge had been in place now with the toll structure that we know of, somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2.5 million would have been collected this winter, Mr. Speaker, $2.5 million this winter from the traffic that went up to supply the mines.

Careful. I must say I have some confidence in what we have heard from Ottawa...

---Interjection