Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will follow the procedure you laid out earlier and that is to save debates on motion until after general comments. I do have a few opening comments. Firstly, I have been very interested right from the beginning and right from before our election

even on the Nunavut Electoral Boundaries Commission. I believe that during the last Boundaries Commission, Baffin South did not, for one reason or another, have its fair say. Therefore, did not receive due consideration of its concerns. Right from the beginning I made it a point to make sure that when this Boundaries Commission came around and gave its report that I would make the concerns known. I have a lot of respect and appreciation for Mr. Richard, Ms. Kusugak, and Mr. Allooloo in the work that they did and their abilities. I appreciate the fact that they made considerable effort in trying to communicate their job to the public. I understand that they did 17 public hearings in a short period of time.

To tell you the truth, we did not give them a lot of time. I applaud them very much for going, I guess, a little further than many people expected them to by recommending 17 seats for Nunavut compared to 20 to 22 which had been suggested earlier. In the public presentation that I made to the commission, I certainly argued for the 17 or so seats but lesser than 20 to 22. As I understand it, it was a common theme in every community that they went to. That the cost of running the Legislative Assembly and how much money the public is willing to pay for politicians, basically is limited. I certainly agree with many of the comments that were made that in the north we are likely over governed. We have basically too many committees, too many politicians, and this is certainly a balance between making sure that there is sufficient number of MLAs that would be in Cabinet and sufficient number of MLAs outside of Cabinet to keep that Cabinet accountable. So, having suggested the 17 along with many, many others, I thank them for that recommendation.

I also realize that in recommending 17 seats there was a number of limitations on how they would divide up the seats. One of my big concerns and one of my missions in my MLA life was to try to get a seat for Sanikiluaq because it was an election issue. It has always been an issue since Sanikiluaq was put in Baffin South. I will talk about that a bit more later on. I will talk about the cost, the distance and the concerns I have on that. I see my time is up, Mr. Chairman. So, once I get into the motions, I will say more and I certainly hope that my colleagues will support the wishes of the community of Sanikiluaq in getting its own seat for that community.