Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise to speak to the bill. I have a lot more to say now that the Conservatives have spoken to it. What they have said about it is shocking.
There are 13 jurisdictions in Canada, 10 provinces and 3 territories, where people govern themselves in a great nation. They are responsible for their own actions. They are responsible for their own legislation and for governing themselves on a number of matters, except those of national importance. Why would anyone be opposed to a bill that would give more of that authority, more equality to those 13 regions, to treat them as responsible governments?
That is why I fought hard to get the devolution agreement for Yukon through Parliament. Yukoners wanted to have the decision making in their territory, just as people in all provinces do. People in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador are no more capable of making decisions about their future than are the people in the Northwest Territories or, indeed, Yukon and Nunavut. We should treat these as mature and responsible governments, and not be paternalistic toward them.
The way the system works now, unlike the provinces which go into debt, the territories need to have a limit set by Ottawa, an arbitrary limit set by cabinet, which I believe at the moment for the Northwest Territories is $500 million, and that could change. It depends on the particular cabinet. As the member said, it was a long, protracted process to make that change, which is obviously quite a hindrance on the government of the Northwest Territories.
The bill would take it from an arbitrary decision of cabinet to a specific percentage of their revenue to the amount they want to borrow. It is 70% of their revenues, which is a very modest amount of debt. It is far less, be it a third or a quarter, proportionately, than the deficit of the present federal government, which has the biggest deficit in history, and the huge debt the Conservatives have assisted in accumulating.
Until 10 minutes ago, of all the consultation I did, I had not heard a single complaint about the bill. No one could possibly think of a reason as to why we would not improve the system for the government of the Northwest Territories.
I want to describe a scenario of the Northwest Territories, because the 40,000 or 50,000 people who are watching may not know what it is like there. They may not know some of the conditions that the government of the Northwest Territories has to deal with, has to govern and why the need loan financing. It is a huge area, bigger than Europe with very few taxpayers and a lot less infrastructure than there is in southern Canada. A lot of communities are not accessible by road. The airports need upgrading and there are no harbours. It is very hard to access, to develop and to govern. It is also very expensive to provide health care. The Northwest Territories needs a government with good resources and the capability to at times get loans, which would be much more modest than those of the federal government.
There is great wealth in the Northwest Territories, but people have to access that wealth. Therefore, the territories need money for infrastructure which is very expensive. The few people who live there could not afford that infrastructure. Once they can access that wealth, then they can reduce their dependency on taxpayers in southern Canada, because they would be creating more revenues for themselves and for Canada from the development of those resources.
There are first nations governments there, the Inuvialuit, the Gwich'in, the Sahtu, the Tlicho. They already have land claim agreements or self-government agreements. They have sufficient areas of land, but they need access as well to that land and could certainly be helped in some cases.
Nahanni National Park was a good example of tourism access to a wonderful site. There are some mines in the far north at the Arctic Ocean that could certainly be opened if they had road and port access. In the Northwest Territories, because there are no roads, development has to be done by ice roads. Many mines cannot open because they do not have power. That could be provided through loans by the GNWT to its energy agency.
The Mackenzie Valley highway would increase tourism not only there but in my riding, as well as supporting the development the member talked about. Put on top of this a new change, climate change, which adds a dramatic and huge cost to the Northwest Territories government because the ice roads that used to be used and the ice bridges that they need to do development are melting earlier, are less reliable, so they have to come up with solutions for that. It is causing mines to flood and building foundations to shift, and roads and sewers are all affected as the permafrost melts. There is a huge cost for adaptations.
The reason I was so disappointed in the government's speech was that it asked why now, when there are ongoing discussions on these issues with the GNWT. Perhaps if it were another government we would not go ahead with this. We might wait for that. We will leave it up to the member. I am recommending we go to committee to hear the witnesses at this point. We are in support of it going to committee. We might not go ahead if we thought those things were going to be successful and guaranteed, just because a government member said the Conservatives were dealing with it, but it does not follow what has happened in the past.
The Prime Minister promised he would never tax income trusts. What happened? They were taxed. He promised three armed icebreakers for the north. Where are they? He promised on national TV a port for Iqaluit. Where is it? If we could believe the government's word on these things in the north, then that would be a fine process. Hopefully the Conservatives do come up with something so that this bill is not necessary, but my understanding is that this will be another way for the member to ensure this needed change gets done.
The parliamentary secretary talked about resource revenues dramatically changing so that this would not work. He should perhaps try giving more of those resource revenues to the Government of the Northwest Territories because if it were getting them then it would have a dramatic effect, but it is not getting those resource revenues.
The member said it would treat the three territories differently. If we did not allow the three territories to be treated differently, we would not have a devolution agreement in the Yukon, which makes it virtually most of the powers of a province, totally different from the other two territories. My understanding from talking to those governments is they actually have different levels of borrowing powers at the moment. So that is a totally uninformed suggestion.
With regard to the conditions that the parliamentary secretary suggested that the Conservatives needed to know to set these limits, imagine telling the government of Quebec that it would have to give us this and this and we will tell it how much it can borrow. That is ridiculously paternalistic. The current government has the largest debt and deficit in the history of Canada. It is far more than the borrowing that is asked for by this responsible Government of the Northwest Territories. It is not an unreasonable quest to send the bill to committee.
I was going to be totally positive in this speech until I heard the ridiculous comments by the government. We should stop being paternalistic. There are 13 jurisdictions in Canada that have responsible government. They should be provided with the tools they need to deal with that. If they use this debt level, which is a very low, modest level, they have to pay it back. It does not cost the Government of Canada anything. I am all in favour and supportive of treating the people in the three territories as the responsible governments they have shown they can be and that they deserve to have.