Joe Handley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I will make available to all of the Members a copy of the letter that we’re sending to the Prime Minister. Certainly Members are free to share that with their constituents, so it will very quickly become a public letter.

Mr. Speaker, I did give the Members a quick briefing on what I thought were the main priorities, and asked for input, if anyone has other ideas. If I can, very quickly, Mr. Speaker, they are financing and resource development, devolution included. Both our financing formula and devolution and resource revenue sharing are priorities. Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on January 23rd, Canadians elected a new Parliament with the Conservative Party of Canada posed to form the new government. On behalf of the people and Government of the Northwest Territories, I would like to extend our sincere congratulations to Mr. Stephen Harper on his election as Prime Minister of Canada.

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We were very pleased and encouraged by the commitment made by Prime Minister-designate Harper on election night to work with the northern territories to help achieve our dreams and to develop the potential of this great region. Once the new...

Mr. Speaker, when Imperial and its partners invest $7.5 billion, that’s a lot of money. It’s enough money to run our whole government for seven years. When they invest that much money in one project, they want to get as much comfort as possible on a bunch of fronts. One of them includes the federal government and they’ve been negotiating with the federal government on that and they had a letter of comfort with the federal government for some outstanding issues. They also realized that we are negotiating devolution and resource revenue sharing. We will become more province-like within the life...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. No, we don’t set the royalties and, no, we don’t have authority over the Crown lands. But what the company wanted before they invested $7 or $8 billion was to know what was going to happen post devolution. Were we going to be ambushing them with some weird and expensive royalty regime? They wanted some certainty. What were we going to do post devolution? That is the context in which we answered the question. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In terms of the principles in the letter, those are long understood and agreed to. Mr. Speaker, I have to again remind the Member to check back in his notes. He will find that the Minister of Finance met with the committee before the letter went out. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to recognize a long-term community resident and leader, and now a resident of Weledeh, Ruth Spence.

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Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Michael Miltenberger will be absent from the House today to attend a federal/provincial/territorial Ministers of Health meeting in Toronto. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we are working with the mines. We cannot require them to hook up to hydro power until we know that we have a viable project and can deliver the hydro power to them. To do that, we need to do several things. One is to complete a memorandum of intent with our aboriginal partners whose traditional lands the project will be situated on. The second is, we need to continue with further environmental and engineering studies to make sure that the project is viable in that respect. We also have to look at a lot of other economic issues. Mr. Speaker, I expect that by this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is certainly interest in the possibility of hooking into hydro power by the existing mines, as well as the one that’s under construction. There have been regular meetings going on as recently as last Friday. There was a meeting between our officials and the Power Corporation and the representatives of all three diamond mines: Ekati, Diavik, and DeBeers. They are looking at the economic viability of it. Of course, the mines will participate, both for environmental reasons as well as cost, as long as this is something that is favourable to their bottom line, as well...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The government has been monitoring what is happening. We have not become directly involved. Certainly, the core area of Yellowknife and its future is of concern to all the citizens of Yellowknife, the same as it would be of any residents of any other town or any other city. What’s happening to the core area? What should stay in the core area, and what should possibly be moved out? There are individuals who have talked to me about it and have expressed their concern that this is one more move toward destroying our downtown. So there are certainly people who would prefer...