Joe Handley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Responsible hunting has always been a key principle that our wildlife people have operated on. I know many hunters do. I have seen hunters go to great lengths to track down a wounded animal to make sure that it is not just being wasted out there. Mr. Speaker, when talking about these herds, I also want to emphasize that the herds tend to increase in size and decrease in size, decline in numbers and so on. Nobody should feel that there is a guarantee that what they have today will necessarily be there in the long term. That has never been part of our plan. The...

Mr. Speaker, I’m going to refer that question to the Minister responsible for official languages. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, we have agreed to a process with the Prime Minister, we agreed to achieving an AIP this spring and a final deal in 2006. When that begins to fall apart, then we will look at what the alternatives might be.

At this point, Mr. Speaker, I don't want to start laying out possible scenarios; they're going to be seen as threats and I don't think our counterparts in this deal are going to view that very well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On the face of it, it helps us because it sets a precedent that we can follow. But as the Member again may have noticed in the papers in the last few days, that Ontario are now raising some concern because they feel that the Prime Minister has done a one-off deal with two provinces that is unfair to Ontario, and that they're going to end up having to pay more than their share in equalization as a result of this. So on that front, there clearly has to be some discussion among the Premiers and with the Prime Minister to figure out how all of this is going to work.

There...

Mr. Speaker, we intend to stay on the radar screen. I can tell the Member that I am very much aware of what's happening. I spoke with Premier McGuinty on Saturday regarding Ontario's concerns, and I have his assurance that he's not trying to do anything that's going to undo our deal, nor is he trying to do anything that's going to somehow compromise what we're asking for. So I have registered our concerns with him and assured him that I'll be watching very closely what happens, and the arguments that Ontario is putting forward. If they are in any way seeming to interfere in our agreement...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The deal as signed today is actually with Newfoundland, Labrador and Nova Scotia, not P.E.I. P.E.I. is not involved in this. As the Member may remember or recall, several years ago, Premier Hamm in Nova Scotia was touring across Canada raising this issue of the unfair distribution of the off-shore tax royalties. This is an arrangement that was negotiated for several years, and it came to a head last June during the federal election. So it is a long-standing one. It did not go on, I don’t believe, as long as our discussions on resource revenue and royalties sharing...

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, there is a lot of work to be done over the next 18 months or two years by one of the review committees, on socioeconomic benefits, environmental or technical issues, before a recommendation is made to the federal government to approve or not approve this pipeline. We have a lot of work to do. I think a lot of this work has to happen at the same time. We don’t want to slow down the pipeline. The gas is needed in the South. We need the revenues. We need the economic activity. We don’t want industry to turn somewhere else, to Alaska, as an alternative, and leave...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think you will find that we are coming to the aid of the communities and the social agencies in a big way. Seventy percent of $1 billion is a lot of money. How does that money get allocated? How is it spent? Those are things that have to be worked out with communities, with the NGOs, the social agencies. My appeal to all of the agencies and programs that work in this is we have to work together on it. We can’t sit back and criticize each other and say we aren’t going to do anything because we haven’t got enough money. We have to take the resources we have and move...

Yes, Mr. Speaker, we have a lot of work ahead of us in the next 18 months or so to get ready for the pipeline. I am confident that we will be there. I want to clarify it’s not just about money either. We have got environmental issues that have to be sorted out. We have training issues. We have social issues, but we have to work together to achieve that. Mr. Speaker, the issue of trust is a good question because we have to work with each other, all of us in government at all levels, NGOs, everybody, towards achieving what’s best for our people, and this pipeline presents a great opportunity.

I...

Mr. Speaker, our government has always been clear with the federal government that we must have a resource revenue sharing agreement in place before the pipeline is completed. Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister, on December 14th when we signed the framework for the Northern Strategy, committed publicly to make substantial progress in the near future on resource revenue sharing and devolution. He committed to having an agreement-in-principle done and signed this spring and I want to hold him to that. He committed to finishing off the negotiations on devolution and resource revenue sharing by 2006...