Mr. Speaker, my colleague actually gave me a chance to respond to what the minister said about me.
We did a study recently in which we looked at income tax returns over the last 10 years across the north as one part of the study. In that study, we noticed that in communities like Lutselk'e, which has been virtually surrounded by new diamond mines in the last 10 years, when we picked a $30,000 cap for family income, the rate of poverty among families went from 30% to 40%. This is during a time when our GDP per capita, averaged over 10 years, had the highest growth rate of any jurisdiction in the country.
We saw that even in close proximity, communities that have economic benefit agreements with the diamond mines still had a high degree of poverty. In fact, it was increasing. Economic development is very good for those who are working for mining companies and have jobs in those fields, but it raises the cost of living enormously and leaves many people behind. That is why we need a very broad approach to resource development, one that comes from the people of the Northwest Territories who have seen the results over the last 10 years and want to improve on them.
With this type of legislation, with these changes to the MVRMA, the minister in Ottawa will be determining the terms and conditions of development, and we will not have the chance to try to make a difference so that resource developments actually work for us.