Joe Handley

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I wish to advise Members that the Honourable Brendan Bell will be absent from the House today to attend the Western Energy Ministers meeting in Calgary. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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

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, 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 support the pipeline. We need the pipeline, I believe, to have a strong economy. But our support is not unconditional. There are conditions on it in the same way with the Inuvialuit, the Gwich’in, the Sahtu, everybody is negotiating benefit and access agreements and we support them in doing that. I know their support is not unconditional. They are not going to say come and take the oil and gas, we don’t need any agreements, we don’t need any more benefits. Our position is the same as theirs. We have conditions on environment, conditions in terms of social issues, conditions...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For starters, 70 percent of our budget of roughly $1 billion is for social programs. I don’t have a breakdown of how much of that goes to the agencies and what their priorities are and how they are going to go about achieving it. I would sure like to share that with them, as much as we have time to do it. I am sure the Ministers of the social programs will be able to give us a lot of detail, as we get into the department estimates, of where that 70 percent of the money is going. We’ve said yes and the Minister of Finance say it goes to social programs and community...

Mr. Speaker, I have been very clear on that all along and I will say it again: We cannot tolerate having zero royalties stay with this government and stay with northern people. We have to have an agreement and we have to have an agreement before the pipeline proceeds. That’s the bottom line for our government and we haven’t changed our position. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, no, we are not ready today for the pipeline. We’ve got a lot of work to do over the next 18 months/two years, however long. We’ve got a lot to do. I think it’s incumbent on all of us here and leaders outside of this Chamber, municipal leaders, aboriginal leaders, federal government, for all of us to work together to get ready. We have a short time frame. We need to get ready but, to answer the question, I would agree we are not ready today. At the same time, if someone had asked the Tlicho if they were ready to sign their agreement six months ago, they would have said no, we are...