Joe Handley

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to respond to some of the comments that have been made. First of all, I would like to say that I really appreciate the advice and the recommendations, the criticisms and so on, that Members raise in this forum. I know a lot of what we have, for example, in a sessional statement may seem like a report card or may seem like old news. We have to keep in mind, at least from my perspective, that we know because we sit in committees and we talk about many of these things, but often the public is not included and may not be familiar. So when we put together a...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments and we have been working hard to achieve our strategy that we collectively set out. I also must say that I’m satisfied with the progress we’ve made in a number of areas. I agree that housing continues to probably be the single biggest and most widespread problem. There are very few communities without issues around housing.

I just want to make a few comments and then I’d like to, Madam Chair, ask the Minister responsible for the Housing Corporation to provide more detail on what we may be doing. We have, as you know, as we’ve said in...

Mr. Speaker, I agree with Mrs. Groenewegen that this is of paramount importance. I can assure you that it is the number one thing that I wake up thinking about in the morning and that I go to bed thinking about when I go to sleep. It is very critical for us that we have the pipeline. First of all, we have got to have the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. If we diddle around and the Alaska pipeline goes first, we will all have nothing in terms of resource revenue from that.

So we need to negotiate with the federal government an arrangement that doesn’t see the roughly $23.7 billion of government...

Mr. Speaker, while it’s true that the federal government can probably just go ahead and permit the building of the Mackenzie pipeline in spite of concerns, objectives or issues that are raised in the North, they can expropriate land and do what they feel is in the national interest. That is not the way the federal government wants to do this. That is why, Mr. Speaker, I understand that Minister Anne McLellan has been given the lead on this one. She is to work out a way to have the pipeline move ahead with the support of northerners. So what does the federal government want? They want our...

Mr. Speaker, I would like to see the information and what the expected results would be, what the dollars are before I commit. I certainly encourage Members who have information on the second phase to get that information to us and I will look at it with my department. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think there is hardly a week that goes by that we are not asked as a government to sponsor something outside of the Territories. I am sure that there is hardly a day that goes by that we are not asked to help out with an event in the Northwest Territories. We certainly give priority to events in the Northwest Territories. When it comes to events outside of the Territories, we look very carefully at them. Mr. Speaker, I only received a couple of weeks ago just a very brief letter from the people organizing this event, which I have no doubt is very important to...

Mr. Speaker, negotiations of devolution is a very complex process. It is one that has been going on for 17 or 18 years. In 2002, we attempted to speed up the process in the last government. I am still hoping that we can move that along quickly. It is a very complicated one, particularly for aboriginal people because it is not just dealing with an administrative arrangement and how we deliver programs, but it is dealing with rights that they have to work their way through. It is moving, but it is not moving as quickly as I like.

I agree with the honourable Member that there are resources...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Like many northerners, I have a concern that the bulk of our wealth and future wealth is in the non-renewable resource sector. While we do have, certainly, many other opportunities in tourism and so on that are renewable, the big piece is non-renewable; diamonds and oil and gas being the big ones.

Mr. Speaker, we have been looking at this. Mr. Roland, the Finance Minister, and I have been talking with the federal government and with aboriginal governments. I wrote to the Prime Minister, Mr. Speaker, last summer and suggested to him that we have an interim resource...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Through this program and other cost-shared agreements with the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, we are continuing with the Mackenzie Valley winter road bridges program. All in all, the program includes the installation of 22 permanent bridges over water crossings and great improvements to the winter road itself.

Transportation continues to work with the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation in a public/private partnership towards the construction of the first highway bridge over the Mackenzie River at Fort Providence. The proponent of this project is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, all I will say is that the standing committee, AOC, has asked for a briefing on this strategy before we release it and we are waiting for AOC to give us a date and a time for that briefing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.