The Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) overwhelmingly voted in favour of a resolution that will see the party push for royalties from northern natural resources to stay in the North.
More than 99 per cent of the 3,000 delegates at the party's national convention taking place this weekend in Halifax, N.S., voted in favour of the resolution that will see the party campaign to allow for all three territories to retain 100 per cent of royalties from natural resource development.
"The Conservative Party believes it is essential to the economic development of the three northern territories to ensure they retain 100% of resource royalties through comprehensive resource revenue sharing agreements with the federal government " the resolution states.
According the Government of the Northwest Territories website, the NWT currently keeps 50 per cent of revenues that are collected from resource development, up to a certain amount. Of that 50 per cent, the territory shares 25 percent of its share with Aboriginal Governments. David Connelly, the CPC national councillor for the NWT, says that with the new resolution, the territory would receive all royalties collected without a cap on funds and continue to share a portion with Indigenous groups in the territory.
"The principal behind keeping 100 per cent of the royalties from the natural resources is so the territories can be self reliant and self sufficient. So that they can make the decisions to build the infrastructure to their natural resources and their communities," said Connelly. "In the news now you hear we want to build the roads and power lines . . . Right now we have to go to Ottawa and ask for the big infrastructure proceedings and right now I see that they are saying, 'no.'"
The resolutions as stand do not mean the federal government has accepted them, The resolutions simply mean that they have been accepted as Conservative policy. Connelly says that the party will look to push them through federal policy if they were to obtain a majority government.