Mr. Speaker, the member speaks very passionately, and I love to hear him speak, so I will give him a chance to speak more passionately again about this bill.
First, there was unanimous support by the legislature, with its all-political spectrum, in Yukon, so why would someone go against that? Second, are treaties in this country not most sacred? As the member for Pontiac said, if the honour of the crown is constitutionally protected, why would anyone go against that?
To give him some time to think, I want to correct something for the record. A Conservative member suggested there was a cut of $24 million in the transfer payments. That is not true. What happened was that new statistics came from the provinces, the transfer payments were based on a formula, and what was really amazing to me, which I have never seen before, the finance minister came to the rescue and found a way of rejigging the formula so that most of that money was recuperated. In fact, in the next budget more money was added so that all the territories got more transfer payments, not less.
The member made the good point that $24 million is an awful lot of money for a small territory. A couple of months ago, the Prime Minister provided $240 million for the mining people in Yukon. Based on the Conservatives saying how important $24 million was, we can all imagine how much that $240 million was appreciated in Yukon.