In summary, for your purposes today, I need to leave you with two thoughts for your consideration.
First, the GNWT has concerns with Bill C-55 as drafted, specifically the increase in unilateral authorities given to federal ministers.
Second, the NWT, although cold and remote, is a real place with 44,000 people living in it in 33 communities, who right now are living with the cumulative impacts of your decisions. It is easy to say from Ottawa that there has not been real economic impact from this decision because your budgets are on a scale that doesn't show the economic impact that even a $7.2-million decrease in activity, as the federal government has described, can have in a region like the Beaufort Delta.
It is easy from where you are to miss the importance residents place on the money coming from outside of government. You may not feel it there, but the unfulfilled federal commitment to negotiate responsibility for the offshore with the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, the imposition of a moratorium, and Bill C-55 arriving in Parliament without our consultation are all connected. They have created a cascade of mistrust that we are asking you to recognize and begin to repair.
I'll stop there. That was a little more than 30 seconds. I have a bit more, but I think we'll just go—