Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and speak to Bill S-5. Of course, we support the development of national parks, and as a national party, we are very much in favour of Parks Canada.
As an MP from the Northwest Territories, my job in Parliament is to make sure that the people in the Northwest Territories get the deal they agreed to with the Conservative government. That is my job, and if I do not do that, I am not doing my job. Therefore, when the hon. member said that somehow this is linked to the flowery thought of all these national parks and that I am opposed to it, that is not the case at all. My job here is to represent the people of the Northwest Territories and the people of the Sahtu. That is what I am here for, and I know that job.
We are pleased, and we hope that the bill will pass later today and that we will all agree to get it done before Christmas, because really, this expansion of the Nahanni National Park Reserve is a Christmas gift to Canada. It is not necessarily simply from the government; it is from the people of the Sahtu Region. The first nations, the people who have settled their land claims, had the ability to say to the Government of Canada that they were willing to enter into a partnership and create a national park reserve in their territory on the land their ancestors lived on, which is theirs to use. They went ahead with this for the good of Canada and for the good of everyone. I think that is who we should be celebrating here today: the people of the Sahtu Region. They are the ones who are ultimately responsible for this national park.
I could say the same thing about the Dehcho Region during the first expansion of the Nahanni national park. It would not have happened without the support of the Dehcho people.
Now we have a third park in the Northwest Territories that our first nations people are looking to develop and create. That is the Thaidene Nene, which is located on the eastern edge of Great Slave Lake. It is a beautiful area, and these people are working very diligently with Parks Canada, with everyone they can, to promote and develop this sacred area, which they understand will be a world-class national park in the future.
Our people in the Northwest Territories are onside with national parks, but we want to make sure that the Conservative government is onside with what it takes to create a national park. It is not just an agreement on the land that will be put in a reserve. It is the understanding that we need to build the infrastructure. We need to make the opportunities for that national park, one of many in the Northwest Territories, to flourish and provide the people of the Sahtu Region with an opportunity to show the beauty of their region, to bring people into Canada, and to offer something that is unique and wonderful in an ever-shrinking world: wilderness that is well preserved and is part of a natural ecosystem. That is what we have with Nááts’ihch’oh park. It is a wonderful opportunity.
We are onside with this endeavour. We look forward to the bill going through third reading here today and leaving this place, with the understanding that it can go to the Governor General for final approval. That would be a very good thing to happen.
It is not that we agree with everything that has happened with the park. There are people who have said that the boundary should be larger, but that is something the government has made a decision on. That is the role of the government. It chose not to listen to the people. Therefore, the Conservatives are moving forward with this reserve, and we have to accept that. That is fine. We will deal with it. There will be other governments in the future that may make the changes required to completely control the ecosystem in that area and make sure it covers the whole watershed. Those are issues we can deal with later.
The national park reserve sets out an area whose final boundary will be renegotiated. There will be opportunities to deal with that. Therefore, this is not a problem and we can move ahead.
I want to switch gears and talk about the Sahtu Region. The Sahtu Region in the Northwest Territories is an amazing area. It has natural resources that have been exploited for many years by Imperial Oil at the Normal Wells oil field. When we think of it, the current government and the Liberal government before it have always refused to allow the royalties, the dollars collected from the Normal Wells oil field, to be returned to the people of the north.
The government tells us what is in the devolution agreement. It says it owns part of that oil field and that it is not going to share it. How did it get ownership of it? It traded the rights to take royalties from Imperial Oil for a one-third share of ownership. Therefore, on a deal that was struck between the Liberals and Conservatives—I do not know who struck this deal, but they made a deal—the government collects the money as ownership rather than royalties, and tells the Northwest Territories government that it is not going to get a penny out of it. This has been going on for 40 years.
When we talk about putting a little money into a national park in the Sahtu Region, that is after the government has fleeced the people of the Northwest Territories, taking all the money out of their pockets from the oil field. That is what the Conservatives did. They cannot deny it; that is the history. With the Liberals and Conservatives, it is the same old story. It is really an unfortunate aspect of the development of the Northwest Territories that this resource is not considered part of any devolution agreement and has been taken out of the equation.
What happens in the Sahtu Region? There is limited infrastructure development, there is a high cost of living, people have less than adequate community resources. That is the situation in the Sahtu Region. No wonder people are looking to a national park for an opportunity to improve their lot in life.
There was some talk in the last couple of years about fracking oil. Shell went in and other companies were fracking oil there. That is fine. At $60 a barrel now, that is over. It is finished. It is not going to happen. Nothing like that is going to happen in the Sahtu Region for a long time. We have an opportunity now to develop other resources, most of which have been identified as tourism. Local people can be involved in this and we can see some sort of economy creeping in on that basis.
It is a sad fact of northern development that these kinds of arrangements are made. Governments take and do not return. Resource development in every other region of the country is used to develop the region. Royalties are used to improve the situation so that the region can develop. In this case in the Sahtu, those monies have amounted to about $120 million to $150 million a year over many years. That might be reduced a bit now with the price of oil going down, but those are the kinds of dollars we are talking about that have been kept out of the Sahtu Region.
The government has not reinvested. It says it owns this resource, but does it put the money back into the region to make sure that it is good? Any normal public government with the right and responsibility to collect money from a region generally puts something back into the region.
I am glad that the government has agreed with the Sahtu people to create the national park, but it might explain why my concern lies more with the promises that are made about the development of the park and the investment that the government is willing to make in national parks in the Northwest Territories.
In the case of the Nahanni expansion, the dollars were actually cut back. There were some seven years in which infrastructure was not developed, and then the dollars intended for infrastructure are cut by 50%.
How does that work? Did you not think about inflation? Does inflation not come into developing infrastructure? Do you not—