Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We're here today talking about an issue that to most of you is possibly a political or academic discussion, because this is something you've never had to fight for. The premier and I have now been at this table or these types of tables going on 15 years, pushing and fighting for devolution and resource revenue sharing. We're here yet again to raise this issue, as the premier has done so succinctly in his statements.
It's simple. We want to have the authority in the north to make decisions about what's happening in the north, about the type of development, the conditions, the systems. We want to manage and govern resource development. Right now, there is overlap. There is confusion. There is uncertainty. As a government, to add some detail to the premier's broad statements, we've been continuing to work for devolution.
While we are moving in areas where the legal authority lies with the federal government, we are using what we see as our political and moral authority to start getting our house in order. We just recently released our water strategy, which is going to lay out how we want to deal with water as it affects us in the Northwest Territories and as it affects us as inhabitants of the Mackenzie River basin, including Alberta, B.C., Yukon, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories. We're working on a land use framework that is going to get our thinking clear and focus our policy as it comes to land use. We fully support the push by McCrank for land use planning. To underline the premier's comments, the federal government has no plan that we have seen or that they have shared with us. They come north on a park by park, resource development by resource development approach, often with little consultation, to impose in many cases what they have decided in Ottawa is good for us. While we may not always disagree, the process thoroughly chafes, I can tell you.
We are continuing to work on issues that are very important to the people here, such as the Species at Risk Act and the Wildlife Act. We've put forward what we think is a very reasonable proposal for regulatory reform that will recognize that we have a system designed by the federal government that has some flaws that can be fixed.
To give you some very fundamental examples, we do not even have the authority to appoint our board members to the regulatory boards that exist here. We have to make recommendations to Ottawa, a process that can take up to a year. We constantly fight quorum issues. We constantly struggle over policy areas that are grey, mandates that are not clear. These are all things that could be clarified if there was the will in Ottawa to do so.
We've offered these suggestions to the government. We are working with the boards. We're working with the aboriginal governments to come forward with an even more defined package when it comes to those types of issues.
You also can't separate economic development from the environment up here. We're a resource-based economy in a very sensitive, often fragile, ecosystem, and we are being hugely impacted by climate change. We need to be able to deal with those issues, as they are related. Right now, we often don't have that authority, and it's very difficult.
There's a huge concern about how we do development. We have around us examples of things that have gone wrong in the past, and I'll just point to one example. Just out the door here, a kilometre or so away, is Giant Mine, where we have 320,000 metric tonnes of arsenic trioxide stuffed into mine shafts that we're going to freeze because we don't know what else to do with it. It's going to cost an enormous amount of money to do.
We have in our backyards examples of what happens when things go wrong when there's not sufficient involvement of the local people. As the premier indicated, we work in partnership with the aboriginal governments on a lot of these broad issues so that we can move forward together.
Our strategy for water is called “Northern Voices, Northern Waters” for that very reason. It's to symbolize that connection. As we sit here today once again making a case to Ottawa, it's a very simple message.
This government has about two years left in its term, and we would very much like to see the yardsticks on this issue finally advanced. It's been a very difficult process. In our terms, I think we've lived through three separate cycles of different federal governments; we tell the same story and make the same case, along with the aboriginal governments, and now it's your turn.
We're glad you're here. We hope this will have some positive effect as you take what you've heard from us back to Ottawa.
Thank you.