Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, would like to just make a few comments today on the subject of devolution and the agreement, the signing ceremony that took place here on the floor of this Chamber yesterday.
Devolution, we all know, has taken many, many years to get to the point to where it is today. As we have gone through different Ministers of Indian Affairs and Aboriginal Affairs over the years, the game has changed. We have come close to having agreements in the past, but these agreements were able to be vetoed by a minority of participants and they were taken off the table.
When the Agreement-in-Principle, the AIP, was signed here, when Premier Floyd Roland signed that with only two Aboriginal governments in the Great Hall here, I privately said to Premier Roland at the time, it’s your time, you have the football, you have to run it towards that goalpost. Now, as we see in this government, our current Premier McLeod has picked up that ball and he has run the distance with it as well.
It’s not a perfect deal. It was never going to be a perfect deal. It was never going to have absolutely everything we asked for. That’s not the nature of negotiation and that’s not the nature of things like this. But it is a good deal. I believe that it has opportunity for becoming a better deal as time progresses and as we evolve as a territory.
I don’t want people to be confused, as Ms. Bisaro said the Premier is saying it is a done deal. We’ve heard Members of this House say we should go to a plebiscite. Why raise the expectations of people in the public by saying, well, let’s have a plebiscite, let’s have an opinion poll and see what everybody thinks? In fact, this government would not be bound by any such plebiscite anyway.
We are the elected leaders. We have the majority of our elected Aboriginal leaders who have come alongside and said, this is the direction we want to go. I think that to try to undertake a plebiscite would be giving perhaps some people out there that are not happy with this deal, the false hope that this is something that could be changed to a great extent, and I don’t believe that’s the case. So when we talk about the consultation process, I think we need to rename it. I think we need to talk about an awareness process as to where this government and the leadership of this territory are taking this territory in their relationship with Ottawa. Thank you.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
