From the Conference’s Labour Day message “Northern Development: At What Cost?”, a pastoral statement on the development of energy resources and its impact on Native Peoples:
[W]hat we see emerging in the Canadian North are forms of exploitation which we often assume happen only Third World countries: a serious abuse of both the Native Peoples and the energy resources of the North. Herein lies the Northern dilemma: What has been described as the “last frontier” in the building of this nation may become our own “Third World”.