Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to give a Member’s statement today. First off, I’d like to congratulate you in taking the helm of the Assembly. I look forward to your leadership in the Assembly for the next four years. I’m quite pleased that you’ve assumed this role and I feel I have every confidence in what you’ll be doing for us here in the leadership role.
Mr. Speaker, next I’d like to acknowledge the constituents of Yellowknife Centre, and sincere thanks goes out to them for the opportunity to serve them in this 17th Legislative Assembly. Yellowknife Centre, in my belief, although I may take exception to the riding of Thebacha, of course, but I believe Yellowknife Centre is one of the toughest ridings to run in in the Northwest Territories. I’ve been successful in three races and I’d like to say that I’d like to acknowledge the hard work always put forward by the competitors. Then, that said, I’d like to acknowledge the work and effort put forth by Arlene Hache, who was my competitor and I’d like to tip my hat to her for running a good campaign.
Mr. Speaker, you can’t run a campaign without friends, volunteers and supporters, and I have a lot of them and I wish I had more than two and a half minutes to thank each one of them individually, but I don’t. But I’m sure with their respective appreciation, I’d like to focus in on the thanks to my family. In particular my wife, who is my best friend, my partner in any situation here, and without her support and love we could never do this job. I have to acknowledge that a little further by saying that I needed her permission in order to run again, because I can tell you any smart man knows they should talk to their wife before they make a decision of this magnitude before they jump in. Continuing on that vein, my two children, both McKinley and Hudson were quite interesting campaign crusaders. My nine-year-old and my six-year-old were out with me knocking on doors, delivering brochures and they were pretty excited to be part of the process. I should highlight my mother, Terry, and my dad, Kim, for their steadfast support throughout the campaign.
Mr. Speaker, I couldn’t have done that without my wife, as I mentioned, and I want to say that the two of us, when we went door to door, took copious notes on many different issues that were brought forward by the Yellowknife Centre constituents, and just to name a couple: addictions, poverty, Aurora College and, certainly, economic growth were central themes. They weren’t the only ones and there were a lot of things we took notes on that we’ll be carrying forward over the coming days and years.
