Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's speech. He raised some questions that I might like to refer to and ask him one in return.
He asked: "Is this agreement fair?" If this agreement were arrived at by an equal number of participants who wanted to make an agreement that would stand and serve their interests, those of Canada and those of the aboriginal people, it is probably fair.
He said that 16,000 square kilometres was a whole lot of land. I agree but we do have a lot of land in the country. Then he said they were custodians. I suggest aboriginal people made less impression on this land in 36,000 years than we immigrants made in the past 200. In fact in the past 50 years we have done a pretty good job of changing the face of this land.
It might be a good thing to return some custodianship to those who believe that the land suckles us all and that it is here for our children and grandchildren and not for our exploitation.
He said that the Dene wanted to participate but that the money may turn out to be mistake. He asked: "Will this agreement lead to self-sufficiency?" All members of the House would like to say they hope very much that it will. Certainly what we have been doing up to now has not led to self-sufficiency. Maybe we had better try another approach to see whether it will work.