Mr. Speaker, I believe that that is a crucial point to be considered when the bill is studied in committee. A number of people have raised this point. The member for Western Arctic spoke about this in his speech. My colleague has raised an important point that will have to be discussed because the members of this House, the people who worked on this bill and Canadians who will be affected by it do not all agree. Nevertheless, I believe that some parts of the bill deserve our support.
Many people do not actually know that the Government of the Northwest Territories does not receive any revenues from research development and relies on federal transfer payments and taxes to deliver public programs and services.
I did not have time to mention this in my speech, but under this agreement, the Government of the Northwest Territories would keep 50% of the revenues collected from research development on public land up to a maximum and the Government of Canada would get the remainder.
There are very positive parts of the bill that we need to keep and to preserve, but as my colleague mentioned, there are also many parts of the bill that we need to study critically.