Thank you, Madam Speaker. Madam Speaker, you and I and the Clerk had the pleasure just three weeks ago of sitting in the house that was built for the Lieutenant Governor of the Northwest Territories in 1878. At that time, there were only two buildings where Regina now sits. That was the house of Lieutenant Governor plus the RCMP barracks. On Dewdney Avenue there was the site of the first territorial government, a small stone building. The civil service at that time was about ten, I think.
The point I'm making is that we have had in the past people who were called Lieutenant Governor, people called Premier. That seems to have been forgotten when the Northwest Territories became just the sparse part of Canada that we've known over the last few decades.
I was a little concerned, though, Madam Speaker, when I heard that this was going to be brought forward as a motion of the House. Not because I don't agree with it, I do agree with it. But the problem I saw was what if this motion were to be defeated? Does that mean to say that we can no longer call the Premier "Premier" if we so wished? It seems to me that what we wanted to do, we know ourselves what we are and what we do, it's to let other people know all across the country that we do have a Premier. Therefore, all correspondence of government, all correspondence of the Legislative Assembly could carry this designation.
The problem I always see with trying to do something formally like this is that throughout history, things happen. We call ourselves the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories, but there is nothing in the NWT Act that says we can. It has just evolved, and it's happened. I remember CBC for many years refused to call us the Legislative Assembly, they insisted on calling us the Executive Council of the Northwest Territories. Gradually, things happen and evolve as people get more comfortable.
So the only concern I had with Mr. Patterson's motion -- and I was ready for an amendment just in case the numbers didn't look right -- that we would amend it somehow to say that the word "Premier" be used on all correspondence in the Legislative Assembly, all correspondence in the Government of the Northwest Territories, so all the stuff that goes on across the country it will be quite clear to those people that this is what we are and this is what we do. Of those Members who didn't feel comfortable about using it in the Assembly, it would be up to them. But gradually, it would become a real thing.
I think, though, that we do have the numbers, Madam Speaker, so I will not be introducing the amendment, and I urge other Members to support the motion.