Mr. Speaker, I, too, compliment the member for Labrador for this important motion, which brings attention to the north and outlines its difference.
I will take a different tack than the last speaker. I will not criticize the government because it has come out in favour of the motion, supporting the north and understanding its differences. It is a motherhood statement to say that the north needs more infrastructure and transportation. It is pretty obvious. It would be astounding if any member of Parliament were to vote against the north.
That is why I was a little surprised by the statements of Bloc members. I assume they will come around. I do not think they want to write off the north. In fact, they have said that they understand the costs are higher in the north. They said on occasion that the federal government had gone over and above the province in a uncoordinated fashion. The motion would solve the problem they identified. It talks about co-operation. The mover said that there was no impingement on jurisdiction and that everyone needed to work together and make their contributions to this.
The northern part of Canada includes three territories, Nunavik, in northern Quebec, Labrador and the northern part of seven provinces.
There are 308 members of Parliament, but almost 40% of the country is represented by three members. In the northern half of provinces in the north there may be only a dozen members out of 308. The member for Labrador has raised a wonderful opportunity for the north to be represented. It is also wonderful that all parties, with the exception of the Bloc, which I hope will change its mind, support the motion.
Why are members of Parliament supporting this? What special strategy is required? I think most members of Parliament know, but for the public, I will go over some of the items.
First, the north has a very harsh climate, which impinges on infrastructure and transportation. There is constantly shifting permafrost. It buckles sewer pipes. It makes potholes in the road. Construction is made more difficult when the temperatures are -40°. There is a very short building season. There are all kinds of problems because of the climate. Because of climate change, this has actually been exacerbated. Solutions came forward for building on permafrost, for instance, having foundations with open houses underneath the screening so the land would stay frozen. Now it is melting. Administration buildings and roads are collapsing, which I will talk about a bit later. There are even more challenges in the north today.
Another is difference is there are very few taxpayers. There are 100,00 taxpayers in three territories. My riding has 1,000 taxpayers. The base is not enough to pay for the necessary infrastructure. Because of the long distances in that jurisdiction, very few taxpayers are served by this infrastructure. We could have a 10 kilometre road in Toronto servicing a million people, who pay $10 of their taxes for infrastructure. We could have a similar 10 kilometre road in the north servicing 10 people. Each of them are not going to pay $100,000 in taxes. It is not realistic. We need this goodwill and support from other members of the House.
In some areas the problem is not the difficulty of repairing these expensive roads, because there are no roads. Things we have come to accept in southern Canada, such as people going everywhere by road because the infrastructure is there, is, in a large part, not available in the north. There would be huge development costs to make these roads available.
I want to talk about aboriginal people for a moment. A large percentage of aboriginal live in the north. Traditionally they have had even less infrastructure provided to them than people living in other parts of the north. Because there are higher proportions, it exacerbates the deficit of public and transportation infrastructure even more. Aboriginal communities have the same problems as other communities, such as climate change, harsh climate, permafrost and the long distances. However, on top of that, they have less revenues. In fact, infrastructure is normally a result of grants by provinces to municipalities. The first nations quite often do not get that same size of grant, or any grant at all, on occasion.
The second big source for municipal infrastructure is from property taxes paid by owners, but in aboriginal communities they have a different social structure, a different organizational method for their society. There are no property owners in many of their communities. They have a collective society. They do not have that source of revenue either, so we have this huge deficit.
Another item people have to remember, and which the member for Labrador so wisely put in the motion, is to involve aboriginal people in the meetings to come up with the solutions. Mandated in the constitution is a government to government relationship. It is pretty obvious that they have to be at the table. They have expressed some concerns to me about how they will access directly the present infrastructure funds in the programming, as a government to government relation, and not going through other governments to get funds that are rightfully theirs.
In the modern treaties of land claims and self-governments, these nations have in some cases more powers than the provinces of Quebec, Ontario, or other provinces, so they need to be at the table in discussions for items under their jurisdictions.
We all know there are four orders of government in Canada. When I go into schools, sometimes it is disappointing that quite often students only guess three. They get the municipal order of government and the federal and provincial orders of government, but they forget there is also now a constitutionally-created first nations order of government.
The vice-president of FCM spoke in Yukon this weekend. He said that there was still an infrastructure deficit in Canada, even after the stimulus package gets delivered. If there is a deficit for the entire country, imagine what it is for the north, with the harsh problems and challenges that I mentioned. Imagine even more what it is like for the aboriginal communities in the north.
Transportation is very important. As I said, there are very few roads in the north, especially in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, Labrador and other parts of the northern provinces. A lot of supplies in Nunavik, Nunavut and NWT have to be shipped or flown in. With products costing five times as much, people cannot afford to live there or to have a reasonable life like the rest of Canadians.
The Liberals have always thought that what expresses our sovereignty is a happy, fulfilled, well-nourished, housed and educated people who are proud of their culture. However, if people cannot afford to live there, they will not follow the use it or lose it strategy of the government. We need to deal with the transportation problem. Improving shipping and lowering the cost of getting supplies in would be one way to do that.
This would require investment in ice warning, in charting the waters in the north, putting movable buoys in and building ports. There are no ports in most of those northern communities for ships to dock and deliver supplies, so people do not have to pay five times as much for a quart of milk.
I will quickly mention some projects in my riding for which we would like to get some support. Mining and tourism are big in the north. We have the Mayo B project and the North Carol Road and Freegold Road projects. We need more hydro. We need to eventually join the B.C. grid. We also have the road to Tuktoyaktuk, the Shakwak project, communications projects and broadband. CBC should not close its CBC a.m. tower in Whitehorse, as it was thinking of doing. Paul Martin's northern strategy, which everyone has followed, gave great attention to the north.
I am sure everyone would want to support this motion and support northerners and their needs.