Okay, good. Well, anyway, I just want to let the House and the people of the North know that I do not intend to run for a Cabinet position. My first duty is to the people of my constituency, and that's what I plan to do. So I wanted to let you guys know firsthand.

I also want to say during my door-to-door, one of our knowledge-keepers asked me a really important question. They asked me: what do you think the spirit and intent of our treaties are? Boy, that just blew me away. It was such a profound question, you know. It made me think because I didn't have an answer right there because, you know, I always was a very cocky young man, thought I had all of the answers. I didn't, though. I was stumped. I did a lot of soul searching, and all of a sudden these glimpses started to pop in my head as I went through my campaign. Here is my glimpse. Here is my paper. I am putting down my paper. I am not looking at my computer.

I had this glimpse of family, it could around a lake, it could we around the Sahtu, it could be around the Tu Nedhe, of this figure going home, greeting their family, saying, "[English translation not provided]," "I love you" in my language, or it could be a "I love you" in whatever language is in your riding, going up, listening to loved ones, having a couple of rabbits on the back of their shoulders, carrying it in, walking in off the land, sitting down at the kitchen table and talking about their day with their family, speaking in their own language.

There is another image that came to me, this vision I guess you would say. All of a sudden, oh, my God, there is this alarm that went off. This person who had brought in the rabbits put this stethoscope around their head or around their shoulders, "I have to go to work. I am sorry. I have to go to surgery. I have to go. [English translation not provided.]" Something in your language, give your loved ones a kiss. "I have got to go. I am sorry. Enjoy the rabbits." On the way out in this glass case there is a drum, in this glass case on the way out of the house, there is a sash or a fiddle, moccasins.

We were told here before we came that we should talk about our vision about four years down the road, 10 years down the road. I am talking about this little vision I just spoke of. It could be a hundred years down the road. How good will that feel that far if people are still speaking our language, are being our doctors, our lawyers, our professionals, our engineers? Hopefully we are not spinning our wheels here in the next four years, and doing something about that. So that was my vision, and that really, really kind of gave me the direction where I wanted to go in my campaign.

So now I am going to pick up my paper again. Now, a lot of voters in the last little while, I guess, are going to go through a little bit of voter fatigue. They have already voted us in the House. There are a lot of municipal elections, and now finally we are going to have our federal election, and we are at the mercy of the next government that will be coming to power. I said in my campaign, one of my platform items was for young people to vote: get out and vote. Get out and vote. Get out and vote. I am saying that right now. You have one more election to deal with, so I am telling you again: get out and vote. This is your chance to have your voice be heard and to elect the next government at the federal level. With that being said, we are at the mercy to set our priorities for what is going to happen with that government, as well, so we will see what comes of that. We do not have a crystal ball. We are going to see how that goes.

We were asked what steps the GNWT should take to achieve this vision.

Land claims. We need to settle our land claims. We need to give all of our Indigenous governments some breathing room. For me, I would like to see this government take a, what's the French term, a laissez-faire, they call it, a hands-off, give them a little bit of room or a variation of it to give our negotiating teams some chance to get work done. We owe it to our people. We owe it to our businesses. We owe it to the people of the North to do that, get work done. A lot of our elders past have wanted to see a lot of our land claims come to closure, to fruition. I think we owe them, and a lot of them are not getting any younger. I think we owe it to them to see that ratified.

Jobs and economy is something else that I will say I encountered during my talks with constituents. We need to reinvigorate our economy. We are coming at the end of a cycle for mining. We are so dependent on that, you know. I am hoping that we review a lot of our policies, such as BIP policies, Affirmative Action Policy. We need to take a good, hard look at them because we have got to give our businesses and our people the best chance at opportunity, and we are not doing that. We have not done that in the past Assemblies. Affirmatively, we need to shape these policies to give our businesses the best chance possible to become successful and profitable and self-sufficient. One thing that I did in my research is there is a program in the United States. They call it the 8(a) program. I am hoping we could kind of mirror something like that and implement it here in the Northwest Territories. That is the direction I would like to see our local government go.

Addictions. A lot of you might know already I am a former RCMP officer, and I worked with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada as a witness coordinator. A lot of you do not see this, but I was privy to it. There are many, many, many files of, just, you see all of the pain and suffering, and 99 percent of it is because of alcohol and drugs. It hurts. It hurts me. A lot of you have not had somebody knock at your door at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, young mother, all bloody, holding a baby and pleading for your help. You will never know that pain. It still sits here. Now, sitting here in this House, hopefully we can do something about it by taking more pride in the culture and dealing with addictions, because addictions and problems with alcohol create such a burden on our correctional system, our emergency services, our police. I am hoping that we can do something about that in this Assembly.

I want to say to everybody here, too, that I myself suffered from addictions. I had a problem with alcohol for many, many years, and I am proud to say to you that I have been sober for almost seven years, and I wanted to say to those who are suffering right now with addictions, that there is going to be help out there. There is help out there, and I am going to be doing my very best in this House to help you and to be a good role model.

Another thing that really irked me during my door-to-door was housing. Oh, that is one of the things that really just gave me fuel to my fire during my constituency. I spoke to somebody in one of our communities, and he said, "Steve, I wish you could help us out, you know. We went to NWT Housing, and we applied for a program to renovate our home. It won't even cost more than a few thousand dollars to fix our windows, fix our doors, and it would have saved us X amount of dollars in fuel savings." We talked about cost saving and stuff like that, and they told me that, "You know what, we were denied. We have to go through so many hoops, and we went through four or five times, and we were denied every single time." I am like, "Where's the disconnect here?" We are talking about policy, a procedure that they fell through the cracks and all of sudden you are not going to help this person, one, keep them warm in winter and, two, help them save money, a simple fix. Hopefully, we can a look at some of those things while we are in this House.

I have heard like a chorus line now, just coming to me now, that we are talking about policies. That is where we need to start and take a look at it. I am not saying we should take a machete to it and take a hard-line approach, but we need to just work with our governments, with our bureaucratic system, with our people at all levels of governments, work together and have good common-sense approaches, humanize our policies, and let's not forget our people at the grass-roots level.

In closing, I am proud to be here. I would like to say that I hope we work all in collaboration. I like to use the word "synergy" because I think that really captures how we need to work with each other because, if one of us drops the ball, it means we all drop the ball, so we should all help each other with our issues and help people of the North, because they're depending on us.

I want to thank my family, my friends, people who are supporting me. I want to thank Alfred for being a role model to me, because it wasn't too long ago we were sitting in the office, and we were joking, and now we're here. I'm humbled, and I'm proud to be sitting with you. Mahsi cho.