Mr. Speaker, the last throne speech was generally accepted to be the worst throne speech in history. Of the hundreds of priorities for the problems and initiatives in the federal government, the Conservatives only dealt with five. The budget could easily fund that if there was almost nothing there.
I want to address one of the omissions from the budget and throne speech. Members have talked about a lot of omissions, but I particularly want to talk about the Arctic and the north. They are not even mentioned in either the throne speech or the budget. There is nothing new for the hundreds of critical issues, problems and priorities for the north and the Arctic. What about keeping the commitment to the protected area strategy, to the protected areas in the Mackenzie Valley so the pipeline can go ahead smoothly?
What about land claim implementation? The Auditor General pointed out problems with land claim implementation in both Nunavut in the Northwest Territories. In Yukon we are in the process of a nine year review. There are concerns about federal negotiators having adequate mandate. Hopefully, the minister, who has good experience in this area, will look into this.
What about the Teslin Tlingit council justice negotiations? Today John Pierce, Georgina Sydney, Richard Sydney, Peter Johnson and Victoria Fred are visiting us. The problem is they keep coming back again and again. They have the ability in their land claim and self-government agreement to take down justice, so let us just get on with it and smooth it through. Let us get on with this new pilot project, which will be a great example for the rest of the country.
When I asked this question in the House of Commons in question period, the Conservatives had a very embarrassing answer. I do not blame the parliamentary secretary because he was not here at the time. However, they have given him things to announce that we had already announced, for instance, funds for helping communities for the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. That was already announced by Anne McLellan in July.
What are the new Conservative initiatives? What new vision, what new programs, what new solutions are there to help solve some of these problems? In the throne speech and the budget the government took away some very bold promises that they had made during the election campaign. For instance, the three Arctic icebreakers and the deep sea port vanished when the budget came out.
Another promise by the leader of the Conservatives at the time wrote to the three territorial premiers and said, yes, that he understood per capita funding did not work in the north and that they needed more. Then when the budget came out, in two cases at least, on page 111 and 115, it said that programs were funded on an equal per capita basis. Three MPs, senators from the north and the last two prime ministers had a passion for the north and they provided unprecedented attention to it.
What are the Conservatives going to do that is new. Please do not include in the answer the initiatives that we already started, including the 10 following initiatives: $500 million for the Mackenzie Valley; increased northern transfer payments; northern strategy or northern economic development funds; northern contaminated sites cleanup; northern marketing with the winter games; the international polar year; northern search and rescue planes; northern homelessness money; and northern infrastructure projects.
I thank the Conservatives for continuing on with all our initiatives because they are good ones. What are their new initiatives, programs, visions to deal with the very complex north, a very important part of Canada?