Mr. Pollard, do you have a response to Mr. Antoine's question?

Mr. Chairman, if this bill were to pass and there were no amendments to the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act, then I suppose somebody could run and be elected to this Legislative Assembly. But, the intent is, as I said earlier this afternoon, Mr. Chairman, if this bill passes today, it will not be given third reading nor would we ask for third reading until such time as the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act has been amended and brought before this House and they would both go to third reading together. There is no intention of taking this bill to third reading without the other bill being amended to prevent the concern that Mr. Antoine raised. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Pollard. Mr. Antoine.

Thank you for that explanation, Mr. Minister. I just want to say for the record that, according to statistics, a large majority of people who are in jails in the Northwest Territories are aboriginal people and the main reason they are in jail are for crimes related to misuse of alcohol and alcohol-related problems. Court documents in the communities are proof of this. The majority of the people who, as a result, are incarcerated are aboriginal people. We know that there are lots of social problems out there and, as a result, here in the Legislative Assembly we have passed legislation against societal violence.

Through the laws of this Legislature, we try to solve some of the problems in society and I'm sure people who are incarcerated are not all very bad people. In fact, I probably have a lot of relatives in there right now and so do a lot of people in here. Knowing these people, they have concerns and they would like to see some changes. They are part of society; they will always return to society after they do their time. This allows them to vote and they have an opportunity to vote for the people who will best serve them. Based on that, I have no reason to oppose this bill.

Like I said at the beginning of my comments, I will be supporting this bill and supporting the idea that inmates who are serving less than two years have the right to vote. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Is there anyone else who wants to say something? Mr. Whitford, do you still want to speak? Mr. Whitford.

Mr. Pollard.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it affects all of the provincial jurisdictions, Yukon and ourselves. I don't know, and we don't know at the table, whether it would affect municipal elections. I can only say that there are such things as precedent, Mr. Chairman, but it certainly does affect the provinces. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Pollard. Have we finished this item at this stage? Mr. Koe.

Mahsi, Mr. Chairman. I would just like to ask the Minister, I recall when there were indications that this bill was going to be revised, there was much discussion about the technical aspects of voting. For example, the ability to use proxies when voting, the possibility of voting by mail and also maybe the use of electronic voting. Can the Minister advise us as to the status of these issues? Has anything changed or is anything proposed to be changed in how people are able to vote in territorial elections?

Thank you, Mr. Koe. Mr. Pollard.

Mr. Chairman, proxies remain the same. There has been nothing done on voting by mail-in ballot, and the electronic voting was not discussed, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Pollard. Are you ready to go clause by clause? Mr. Dent.

It's a pretty long motion and I want to be sure that everybody understands your motion, Mr. Dent. But your motion is in order. I want to ask Members if everybody understands the motion, or would you like to have it written up? We'll take a break while that motion is written up and translated.

---SHORT RECESS

I will call the committee back to order. We have a quorum and now have a written and translated motion. It is a motion to defer so there is no debate or discussion.

(Microphones turned off)

A point of order was made first by Mr. Koe.

Point Of Order

Mr. Chairman, I have a translated copy here in English and it looks like Inuktitut, but there is no Gwich'in translation, so I would like to request that we have Gwich'in translation of this motion, please.

We've heard one point of order and I believe I can only hear one point of order at a time. I will need to get some legal advice on the point of order made by Mr. Koe that this motion has only been translated into one language.

To your point of order, Mr. Koe, we do have an Official Languages Act and it is not tested that often, but you do have a point of order. You have a right to have this motion put into that language; so, therefore, to this one point of order, I would request that it get translated into Gwich'in, which is your request. I can't entertain other points of order until we deal with this one.

---SHORT RECESS

Before I can recognize a point of order, there has to be something on which to raise a point of order. So I would like to ask Mr. Dent to read his motion into the record, please.

---Laughter

We're going to give Mr. Koe a test.