Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will be supporting the motion. I have also been back and forth on this issue a fewness times, but I think after all is said and done by us here, I think we do need to hear from the people we represent and I think the commission is an excellent opportunity to do that. At that time, they can tell us things like if they think there are too many Members. Maybe they think we can operate with less Members. There is quite a wide disparity in the size of the ridings that we represent. I know myself, I represent one of the larger ridings in the territory and it is a tremendous amount of work and responsibility. Mr. Miltenberger says there are ridings in Ontario with 80,000 constituents, but this is the north. We do things a little differently here, Mr. Speaker, as Mr. Miltenberger knows. I think we do have to have the critical mass, for lack of a better word, in order to run our government properly and with a breakdown of seven and seven I do question whether or not this is feasible. Having said that, we could argue this for a long time. I think the most important thing is that through the commission we will give northerners, the people in the western Arctic the opportunity to speak to the subject. At that time we can then come back and debate it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Jane Groenewegen on Motion 19-13(5): Establishment Of Northwest Territories Electoral Boundaries Commission
In the Legislative Assembly on June 2nd, 1998. See this statement in context.
Motion 19-13(5): Establishment Of Northwest Territories Electoral Boundaries Commission
Item 16: Motions
June 1st, 1998
Page 1566
See context to find out what was said next.