Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The issue of guardianship and the need for dependent adults to have some way to make important decisions about their life has been with us for a long time. As Mr. Gargan has reported to the House, we have received information from several groups that indicated to us which way we should go.
Very often, it was a difficult to sort through the maze of sometimes conflicting opinions about how guardianship and trusteeship should operate in the Northwest Territories. During the review, Mr. Chairman, and even prior to this review when the bill first came into this House, I expressed some concerns that I have, because I've taken a personal interest in this particular subject for at least 10 years.
In making the comments I am about to make, Mr. Chairman, I wouldn't want to convey the opinion that we have not made substantial progress in the way this bill has been developed and brought to this stage in the House where we are about to go through each of the clauses. My major interest in such issues stems from a lifetime concern, as a professional person for the most part, in trying to give people the skills so they would be independent.
I saw that as the biggest problem facing the Northwest Territories, the degree of independence that societies, individuals, children in families, and kids in school strive to achieve. The whole process is to make you independent. However, some people in our societies are just not able to get that independence. That should be the principle that guides us all; how can we find ways of liberating people so they can be as independent as we can possibly make them. That has been my interest for most of my working life. Most of the work I have done has been directed at finding ways of making people independent, so they can stand up on their own feet.
I recognize, however, that there are groups of people in our society who need a lot of help; that can't be sovereign, independent people in the way we normally use that word. When we got the bill to examine, Mr. Chairman, it struck me that we could have done more with this bill to recognize that fundamental principle. We don't go as far as we can in recognizing that every individual, however frail or fragile they are, may have a spark and may, as much as possible, make decisions about themselves.
Because a bill that is sponsored by the government very often has been pushed this way and that way before it gets to us, very often it is very difficult to see which way you can change the bill, which operates from a certain set of principles and standards. It becomes very difficult for an individual Member to sort through all the research that has been done by government and all the information available from the provinces to make sure that what we do here is consistent with our own needs, but also with what is consistent, in some degree, with our society at large.
So, I was not able to get all the information I needed in committee in order to bring that kind of perspective to this piece of legislation. We said in our report that it is a progressive piece of legislation. In a sense, it is much better than anything we've got right now. It is better than several other pieces of legislation that exist in the country which are outdated and passed many, many decades ago.
What I want to do is make sure that what we do right now, we do in the spirit of recognizing that what we do now may not be changed for the next 20 years; that what we do now should be as good as we can possibly make it. I worked very carefully to see if there is some way -- even at this late stage and even though it is in the House now and we are going clause by clause -- we could recognize that if there is anything this Legislature is all about, it is to find ways, as much as possible, to help people make their own decisions and not have others make them for them; recognizing that there are still some cases where that would not be possible. We should find some way of introducing, even at this late stage, some words which recognize that we want to support whatever spark exists among people, so they can think and act for themselves. I have talked to ordinary Members about it and we have discussed it in committee. Our problem was we never knew what mechanism to use. We don't have the resources of government, as individual Members. It is very difficult for us to have the kind of expertise available to us that government lawyers would provide.
However, I have worked with our legal counsel and I believe there are some words we have come up with that may be able to convince Members that, even at this late stage, we could still make some small changes that would make this the best legislation that exists in this country. Also, it would confirm that what we do in the Northwest Territories has always been to try to find ways of making people independent, stand on their feet and to act for themselves where possible.
So, Mr. Chairman, I have said what I want to say and any further elaboration would be redundant and would probably irritate people. So when the time comes, I will be introducing some amendments to this act and I would urge Members to think carefully about the proposed changes and not to automatically say we have done all this work. This is the chamber where we make decisions and we should be open-minded about any possibility for change, even at this late date, because it has been very difficult to come up with something that would be acceptable to the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.