Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When we went to the Ski Club in Yellowknife, there were talks of a Boundary Commission. At that time, we had an agreement that we would go talk to our constituents and see what they felt, whether or not a Boundary Commission was needed or not, and we talked to the Aboriginal Summit. I did that. The message was clear. They do not need a Boundaries Commission at this time, not to support it. So I would not be supporting it because I have talked to the people in my riding, and at this time, there is no need for a Boundaries Commission. We can move ahead after April 1st, 1999 as a government. We have already agreed to do that. We have already agreed that there would be some increase in Members of Cabinet, and we can function until the
fall of 1999. We are all willing to take on that responsibility. I think we get a full day's pay; we should do a full day's work. That may mean putting in a few extra hours, but I think we are all willing to do that.
It seems everything is relevant in this world, Mr. Speaker. We have the president of the teachers' union here everyday sitting up in the gallery, lobbying the Members for more money for teachers. We have Members saying that the work increase, the load, in our schools, we need more money for that. We need more money for overworked civil servants. We need more money for overworked people in our communities. We need more money for drug and alcohol workers. A lot of times, we say we can only do things that are within the fiscal operation that we do have, and that is within the existing dollars we do have. Every MLA that this legislature increases, every number, I think it is around $300,000 for every Member. Increase it by one or four. It increases the budget. I think we should make a real attempt at working with the 14 Members we have and a real attempt at making it work. It would be good, for once in the history of this country, if a government can do more with less, that is less politicians. I am not afraid at all, Mr. Speaker, of attempting to do that. I do not mind making the commitment to the people of the Northwest Territories to attempt to do that. I do not think that I would want to jump ahead and say we have to increase it by 18 Members or 20 Members just for the simple reason that you need the numbers to keep the government in line or need the numbers to keep the bureaucracy in line. There are systems in place and a process is in place, even now, that can be adopted to do that. I think we can do that.
I think also that you always have to watch the balance of what is happening in this Legislative Assembly. There is no doubt in anybody's mind that Yellowknife is growing. A downturn in Yellowknife's economy is meaning it stays still for a short period of time. It is growing drastically because our constituents come and move to the city to get services. Hay River is growing. Fort Smith and Inuvik are. Those are the big areas in the Northwest Territories. Then we have our outlying communities.
I represent the smallest community in the Northwest Territories, the smallest riding, and we feel sometimes that our capital city or the bigger centres move ahead a lot faster than the smaller centres. We always say that it is a loop type economy, whatever money the government spends ends up coming back. For example, money from Yellowknife goes to Fort Resolution, it ends up in Hay River. Money from Yellowknife goes to Lutselk'e, it ends up back in Yellowknife. That is just the way it is.
As far as increasing the membership in this Legislative Assembly, I think Members should think long and hard on what message that sends to everybody else. We are saying there are not enough dollars when we can spend it on ourselves. Also, the Aboriginal Summit has said to us that if it is so critical to increase the seats, and it is so critical that the workload is too high, then we should look at going for an election by April 1st, 1999, as well. We should really look at that. If it is impossible to work with 14 Members, then we would be doing justice to the public if we have to justify it by saying we need more Members. It may then be possible that we should also revisit whether or not we should have an election in the fall. Maybe we should move it to the spring because we do not have enough Members to function as government.
--Applause
With that, Mr. Speaker, I encourage Members to vote against this motion. Thank you.