Bill Braden

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today is indeed, or hopefully will be, the last day of this session.

Thank you, Madam Chair. That’s a good question. As recommended to us in the report of the CEO, the problem is that young people are participating in elections in increasingly shrinking numbers. Like Canada’s federal Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Kingsley, in the last federal election quite an extensive nation-wide program was launched aimed at the young people. So while the program here is suggesting web-based for schools, educational institutions, it would have a big platform to jump elsewhere. So that was the focus, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I am going to briefly set the context of our committee, Madam Chair. Before I get into that, I would like to recognize in the gallery today our Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Glen McLean.

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Madam Chair, the Rules and Procedures committee accepted on behalf of the Legislative Assembly, the report of the Chief Electoral Officer earlier last year. Accordingly, we took the report to the public for a response. Two public hearings were held and the views of Members were sought into four recommendations that were put forward. There were some very constructive ones on...

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I do want to express my appreciation and support and the justification that my colleagues have given for backing this on behalf of injured workers in their constituencies who they know of. Mr. Hawkins indicated that our phones are indeed ready to be answered. I must admit I am feeling a little shy, Mr. Speaker, because I don’t have boxes and boxes of files that I will be able to put at the disposal of the Auditor General, because so many of those workers over the years have had to leave the NWT and are living in other parts of Canada because they simply...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

WHEREAS the Ministers responsible for the Workers' Compensation Board of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut appointed a Workers' Compensation Board Legislative Review Panel in 2001 to consult with stakeholders and make recommendations to the Ministers for changes to the acts;

AND WHEREAS the panel, upon completion of its work, prepared a report in December 2001 entitled "Act Now" which expressed concern that the workers' compensation system has become adversarial and recommended, based on input from both workers and employers, that an independent review of WCB...

Mr. Speaker, I very much look forward to the opportunity to take these issues on with our American friends. I do call them friends; our nations do have their differences, but we have so much in common. This is where I wanted to ask too of the potential that this web site has to engage in even greater trade and exchange. The American market is the world’s biggest consumer of energy and diamonds, we’ve got lots of that, and they are great consumers of our hunting and fishing products. Can we use this new link, Mr. Speaker, to further share in our interests with the Americans for those...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions this afternoon are for the Premier in his capacity as the Minister responsible for Intergovernmental Affairs. Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge the visit to the Northwest Territories over the last couple of days of Naim Ahmed, the consulate general from the American consulate in Calgary to the Northwest Territories, and the initiative that the American government has taken to create virtual consulates on the web site for the Northwest Territories as well as Nunavut and the Yukon. As we have heard this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, sometimes we wonder...

Everybody have a great spring and we will see you back here in May. Thank you.

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I deserved that, but I will try to forge on here. Mr. Speaker, it has been a long four weeks here, a productive four weeks. We have all had a chance to deliver our messages and I would like to return to the one that I believe is very, very high and should stay way up there on the priority list of this Assembly and especially this Cabinet, it is about the theme of housing.

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I have a bit of a message here. Members might be familiar with the tune and they are more than welcome to join me in this.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, appreciate any Member's contention that there may be a point of process and an interference with the public's access to what we are doing here. In this case, I do not feel that we have breached that trust.

The purpose of the bill, when it was introduced last fall, was quite clear to me, Mr. Speaker, that it was designed to be a survey, if you will, or an inventory of all of our legislation to catch the areas and definitions regarding spouses or references to particular genders that would not be consistent with Canadian law, and we are compelled to follow that....