Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I would like to suggest something to my colleagues that I have been thinking about. I thought it was an original idea, but since I have mentioned it to a few people, I found out that it is done in other jurisdictions in the country and probably other countries as well.

When most of us ran for public office and perhaps served in public office at a municipal level previous to this, when you talk to people, one of the big drawbacks they have about getting into public office is that they have a fear or an apprehension about speaking in public. I don't know about the rest of the Members, but when I was a student in school, we used to do public speaking as part of our curriculum. We had to stand up in front of the class and speak. For some time, I thought it would be good to initiate some program where we would reinstate a public speaking contest in the schools.

I have an idea of initiating a program whereby we could invite students, perhaps at the grade 7 level, to conduct a public speaking contest from each of the ridings and the winners of those public speaking contests could possibly be brought to Yellowknife and be given the honour of being an MLA for one day in the place of the sitting Members. It is something I want to pursue with the Members. It is an idea at this time. Perhaps if you got the cooperation of a business that could sponsor bringing them here and reintroduce the public speaking in the classroom. Thank you.

--- Applause