Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to rise to speak about a matter that was raised by my colleagues in the House yesterday, by the honourable Member for Yellowknife South and the honourable Member for North Slave.

It is with regard to a matter of discussion now here in the city of Yellowknife that was raised by the Stanton Yellowknife Hospital board. I wanted to make a couple of comments because it is important that all Members of this Assembly and people of the north recognize the importance of contributions of people, whether they are aboriginal people or non-aboriginal people.

I recall at one time a debate occurring in our Assembly about a change of name for our Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre. The kind of debate that occurred at that particular time was such that everyone came to the conclusion that Members couldn't agree with the name because the question was what name would we give it. Would we give it a Gwich'in name? Would we give it a name from the Slavey community? Would it be the Inuit community? Would it be a non-aboriginal name? The fact is, Mr. Speaker, I wanted to say this: I do not have a problem with the name of Stanton, mainly because my view is that we have to recognize people for what they have contributed to the north. In our community, we have a health centre by the name of William Firth Health Centre, and he is a descendant of a Scotsman and a Gwich'in. The fact is that what we were doing was recognizing his contribution to the health services in our community.

I wanted to say that I hope, Mr. Speaker, that we take the advice of the honourable Member for North Slave and recognize that what we should be focusing on clearly are the services and the programs which are being delivered to our people. I agree with the honourable Member because I don't want the issue of names to confuse the responsibility that we have of delivering programs and services. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause