Merci, Monsieur le President. [English translation not provided.]
I have three broad commitments that I would like to make if elected to Cabinet this afternoon, but first, I want to give a lengthy introduction to myself, as we have all found, although we have been speaking about our priorities and our vision, we don't necessarily know a lot about one another's backgrounds.
I was born and raised in Calgary to Ed and Bev Wawzonek, who are first-generation immigrants to Canada. They both grew up north of Edmonton on farms where their parents didn't speak English. In fact, my uncle still lives on my mother's farm and only had running water when I was an adult.
I met my birth family when I was an adult living in Toronto. My birth mother found me, Shelly Kunz from the Lac La Biche area of Alberta, and then my birth father also met me, Steven Woake, and I discovered that he is a member of the Metis Nation of Alberta. He immediately sent me the paperwork, seeking for me to join the Metis Nation of Alberta. No longer living in Alberta at the time, that wasn't possible, but I had the opportunity to look at my ancestry and see the line that traced straight back to the Lagimodiere family and the founding of the Red River Settlements in Manitoba. Although I wasn't raised in the Metis culture, I am deeply proud of this heritage.
None of my parents had the opportunity to attend university. Every one of my parents made sacrifices to make sure that I would have the opportunity to dream and the opportunity to follow whatever dreams I had. When I attended my undergraduate at the University of Calgary, over 20 years ago now, it sparked in my mind, "Why is it that we don't all have the opportunity to dream, and why is it that we don't all have the opportunity to follow our dreams?" When something holds a member of our society back, it holds us all back. It holds back our wellness, individually and as a group, and it holds back our collective prosperity.
A few years later, I decided that the one way that I might help seek change would be to help change the rules, and that's when I went to law school. I decided to learn about the rules that sometimes restrict us, but also learn about a way that we can challenge inequality, challenge unfairness, and demand better from our government. If you had asked me back then whether I might eventually run for office, I would likely have laughed and told you that my plan was more to take governments to court rather than stand in one.
My husband, a geologist, back in 2007, took an opportunity here in Yellowknife. I opened my own law practice. I attended circuit courts, I believe, in every community that has a circuit court here in the Northwest Territories. My regular stomping grounds were, in fact, the Sachs Harbour/ Paulatuk/ Ulukhaktok circuit, which I had many wonderful opportunities to visit.
As a lawyer, you have to understand a person's story in order to truly be able to help them and to present their case. You stand up, and you own their story on their behalf. To do that, I met with not only my clients, but their parents, their spouses, and sometimes their children; I had tea in their homes; and I heard them tell me heartbreaking stories of childhood trauma, family breakdown, residential school experiences, poverty, mental illness, and addictions. I realized that I was now in a place that I needed to be in order to help make a positive change for people and to help seek justice and more equality.
When the eldest of my two children was born, almost eight years ago now, I realized I had to step back from mothering all of my clients, and so my practice evolved away from criminal practice. I joined a fully northern-owned and fully northern-operated law firm and expanded into more general litigation. What that meant was that I was now having the opportunity to help small- and medium-sized businesses across the Northwest Territories. I worked with government departments; ran coroner's inquests; did child protection work; worked with environmental regulatory boards; worked with professional organizations, including teachers and nurses; worked with other governments on their behalf; the City of Yellowknife; and some small community governments as well.
I very soon developed a balanced and broad practice that gave me perspective on the social envelope, as well as government practice, government foundations, and business needs. I realized that, at my core, what drives me and motivates me has never changed. It is that I want to advocate for creative and effective solutions that help people, improve communities, and improve societies. I want to help solve problems. That is true across sectors, and it's true across industries.
I will give you a couple of quick examples. I was counsel last year at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. The inquiry was mandated to examine, essentially, every system in society, from our government relationships, education, healthcare, justice, to even relationships with industry. We were being asked to help find solutions for why there was anything less than equity in our society. I also have had the pleasure of serving with now-Senator Dawn Anderson on the steering committee that designed the Domestic Violence Treatment Option court here in the Northwest Territories and, later, the Wellness Court, as well. These are courts that are seeking, again, creative solutions to help improve the situations facing victims and offenders, to actually go to the root of what causes crime, and to truly collaborate across departments because that's the only way those solutions are going to be solved.
I have appeared many times before standing committees, in fact before now, some of my colleagues, on behalf of many organizations, including the Canadian Bar Association and the Chamber of Commerce, always there advocating for new solutions.
As my career evolved, what surprised me was that, although criminal court is flashy and fun, what I truly love is administrative law, which, if you haven't heard of that, it's everything outside of the courtroom. Essentially, it's all the decisions made by a Minister, boards and tribunals, like student financial assistance, the education authorities. It really is how we make fair decisions, and so my work has evolved where I've actually had the opportunity to teach boards and tribunals and decision-makers how to structure a fair process, how to make a decision that actually meets a legal standard of being reasonable, and how to give good reasons so that the people that are being affected by your decision understand why you've made it.
I have applied that work in a lot of different areas. I've acted as the president in the Law Society of the Northwest Territories, as a secretary and director at the Northwest Territories Chamber of Commerce. I was appointed as the chair of the Legal Aid Commission and to the Income Appeals Assistance Committee as well as many other community positions. All the while, I have found that fair and effective processes to drive rational decision-making that benefit people, community, and society is true across sectors and industries. That's the approach that I want to bring to Cabinet.
The three commitments I'd like to make specifically are:
- Commitment to continue to be committed to people, to relationships, and to working and understanding the stories of others, starting right at the front lines of all government services and continuing right up to every person in this Chamber.
- I'd like to make a commitment to continue to seek creative and effective solutions. A process of solution-finding doesn't end when you think you have found the solution. You need to implement your solution. You need to make sure it actually has the results that you need to fix the problem you were trying to fix because, if it doesn't, you need to go back and be more creative. When I say "you," I actually should say "we" because it's not about solutions that I might have. My role isn't necessarily to come up with the solutions. It's to go out and help people find those solutions and bring them forward.
- My third commitment would be to fair processes and reasonable decision-making, reasonable decisions that I'm prepared to explain so that everyone who is affected by them understands why I have made them.
I thank you very much for your consideration today.
---Applause