Dennis, I want to start by asking you a couple of things, first of all by saying how nice it is to see you again. You look—I've noticed this with a number of my former colleagues who have left political life—better rested, less kind of pasty than those of us who stayed on. At any rate, it is good to see you and to listen to what you had to say.
I have a very strong sense...I have no particular expertise about the north, but I am a historian so I'm aware of the fact that much of what is now northern Manitoba, northern Ontario, northern Quebec, was actually part of what was then a much larger Northwest Territories, and was given to the provinces often, or perhaps always, without much regard for the people who were actually living there. For example, the Inuit in northern Quebec share a language and a culture with people who are in Nunavut. I'm positive that when that land was transferred to Quebec in 1912, that was not taken into account. I'm guessing a similar history applies to these other areas, so I have a lot of sympathy for what you're saying about the commonalities of interest.
I suspect there is a constitutional barrier that makes it impossible to have votes in one province—I'm saying province, not territory here—affect representation in another. I suspect the courts would not permit that. But I do think it would be possible—I'm not recommending this; I'm more asking for your opinion on this because it actually came up when we were in Whitehorse—to consider the idea of having some kind of joint representation across the territories. Territories are not baked into the Constitution the same way that provinces are.
An idea that was discussed there, not conclusively of course, was the idea that you could have all three territories having some kind of system that allows for a degree of proportionality among their federal MPs. You obviously need to have more than one MP to have some kind of degree of proportionality, and this would be a way of achieving it.
What you lose, of course, is that while there are common interests, there are also some obvious distinctions. You have three separate governments all working with Ottawa and doing their own domestic legislation, and the linguistic and cultural makeup of the territories have some differences as well.
May I throw out that idea that was tossed around when we were in Whitehorse, and ask what you think of that idea?