Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning to each of you and thank you very much for your presentations.
Mr. Taptuna was quite strong in some of his statements, and they're well appreciated, at least by me and I'm sure by some of my other colleagues, when he says:
Ottawa must come to the negotiating table and devolve control of this land and its resources to the Canadians who live here, as has been done in every province.
If you withhold this from us and continue to try to control development in the north from Ottawa, our people cannot fulfill our historic role as stewards of the land and its resources.
That's a pretty powerful statement, and I see it echoed in a lot of what the other presenters have said. Mayor Elisapee talked about the need for a share of revenue resources. We talk about policies that doesn't make sense because they're developed in the south. Mr. Morrissey's presentation was much along the same lines.
And here we are. I'm from Labrador, so I'm sort of semi-north, but a lot of us are from the south. I heard Mr. Simeonie say that you don't want another study, and here we are doing another study. I think we have to be very careful, as a committee, not to repeat some of the mistakes or fall into some of the same traps that maybe others have in the past.
I'll get to my primary question around devolution. How high a priority is this for each of you? What opportunities do you see in the process of devolution, and where is it, from your perspective? We hear about it. We understand there were some negotiations. Depending on who you talk to, they may be fast, they may be slow, they may be halted all together.
We just throw out that question to each of you. What is devolution? If you have devolution, does it uphold what Mr. Taptuna and the rest of you have said, that you can then make policy that makes sense for the people who live here? Will you get a share of the revenue resources and be able to invest the way you want to invest, maybe uphold the traditional industries more than they've been upheld? I'll just ask each of you that question.