(Translation) Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am a Member of the Standing Committee on Legislation. We visited the communities in the Northwest Territories to hear from the public with regard to the idea of having an ombudsman or ombudsperson. Perhaps not many people attended our public meetings, and we did not go to some of my constituency, but no one ever stated, to me, that there should not be an ombudsperson. They requested someone to help them acquire information from the government. I have heard this at all of the meetings I have attended. There are departments which we can acquire information from, but we cannot do that as unilingual people. When a person has a problem and does not know where to go to get information, this is why we wanted this kind of legislation.

There was never anyone during our visits who said they did not want legislation of this sort. Every community does not need to have an ombudsperson, as long as there is one in the region. As Members of the Legislative Assembly, we have to be available to our people. People have the right to information from the government and not just from their MLAs. Someone said there were not many people who attended the public meetings, but of all of the communities which I visited, they stressed the fact that there should be some kind of an ombudsperson, not necessarily in all of the communities. However, perhaps one in the region.

In my constituency, there were people saying there should be an ombudsperson so that the public at large can get information from the government. For that reason, we visited the communities to get their views and what they felt about acquiring an ombudsperson or anyone who can be an information officer for the public. There might not have been very many people who attended the public meetings but out of all of the people I heard from, no one ever said they did not want an ombudsperson or information officer. Perhaps the lack of participation by the public is because this was the first year we visited the communities.