[English translation not provided.]
I just wanted to translate what I just said. It doesn’t reflect here in the Member’s statement, but just the fact that people are coming here and exploiting our available lands and resources and gas and oil, yet our government is in trouble financially.
As well, for the most part, for our population, our unemployment rate is not that high, especially in the regions and communities. Why are we in this situation?
People expect all of us as MLAs and our government to put us in power to act and govern our Territory, yet we don’t seem to have the strength or the political will to continue with our resource-revenue sharing discussions. Today I’d like to let the government know. I know that Mr. Premier was down in Ottawa early in our term, and he says he was stonewalled by our federal government when he requested royalty resource revenue discussions as well as devolution discussions.
I think it’s still up to us to provide the willpower to begin those discussions, to have an office here in the North, to talk with our other political organizations. We’ve got other aboriginal jurisdictions that we need support from, and I would urge our government to continue those discussions.
One of the ways, too, that I believe we can make headway is if we do pursue this heritage fund idea. Stop the flow from going to Ottawa. Put it in a trust fund until we as political organizations can agree how to spend those resource revenues that are leaving the North. I believe that’s another priority that our government should concentrate on and pursue. Mahsi cho.
