Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will support the bill. I want to see this, as my colleague for Amittuq has quite correctly pointed out, debated a little bit further, and I am certainly aware that it will be an election issue.
In my opinion, when it comes to the principle of the bill, what we are doing is we are evolving. We are evolving from one form of government to another form. The ultimate form of government, of course, would be political parties, which none of us want to see here at this point in time. It has been brought up in many elections in the past and will continue to be debated in elections in the future, I am sure.
Many of us have spoken about the unique form of government that we have here in the territories, and we boast about it when we travel internationally. People do look at us with envy that we can manage the way we have. But that type of relationship, Mr. Speaker, that we have so much enjoyed, has been eroded in the past four years. It was not consensus any more; it was quasi-party politics, without names. This, in my opinion and in the opinions of many people that I represent, is a good, positive steps towards rectifying a situation that I guess could, if taken to its ultimate, get out of hand, and we will end up with what we don't want: party politics.
Here's a relief valve, if you wish, that will meet our needs in this unique Legislature and for the next government. Then, we can go back to consensus government at a later time, if we choose and if the people direct us, or we can make a step forward into party politics if that is what the people direct us to do and that is what this House does at the end of the next four years.
I think that we do need to debate this a little bit more to work out some of the things that are perhaps frightening to us, like my colleague from Yellowknife Centre has said. We see a wolf behind every bush on some of the issues that would scare us. How are we going to do these things? How are we going to accommodate the selection of a Premier? How are we going to ensure that there is a balance between the respective groups in the territories, the Dene, the Metis, the non-aboriginal, the Inuit? How are we going to ensure that is happening? How are we going to ensure that there is a balanced representation on Cabinet of those people by population, those types of things; where one represents 25 per cent of the population of the territories, one should have 25 per cent of the say.