Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to speak about legal training. Mr. Speaker, today our jails are full and in those jails there is abuse and things happening that we are not able to control. This is a weakness of our current legal system. At the same time, the GNWT is promoting community justice which empowers communities. It recognizes traditional methods of justice of the aboriginal people. However, community justice by itself is not an answer. Those who end up in the legal system must still interface between the courts and community justice. What we need are trained northerners who can help this system. We now have dedicated individuals who are trying to work in this system, we have court workers, we have JPs and we have other court officers but they have limited formal legal training.

It is not fair to them or to the people that they are working with. We need northerners with real legal training, the type of training that is now going to happen in Nunavut which is a result of the $40 million that they are receiving to implement Nunavut. We need something similar in the west. I am proposing that we start a certificate and a diploma program at Aurora College, which would build on the success of other programs. By this I am talking about a one year academic preparation to help those people who have been out of school for awhile to prepare them for school. Also, the program could be transferable to a university so that people could go to law school once they have finished or after they work for awhile.

The result of this, we would have court workers who could have a minimum of one year academic legal training and communities with legally trained people to promote and to propel community justice. We could also have JPs with actual legal training that extends beyond workshops and that type of thing. We would also have northern born lawyers and northern born judges as the end result. That is one of my goals for this Assembly, to work towards controlling our own destiny. But we need to find partnerships to create this program. To that end, I have spoken to the Minister of Justice and he has agreed to look into it. Later this month I will be attending an aboriginal justice conference in Inuvik, at which time I will be promoting this concept. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

-- Applause