Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, to the motion, on establishing an Electoral District Boundaries Commission, looking at the west. There are merits to both sides of the argument. After division, we are going to be in our own new territory. That is where our focus in the west will be is how we are going to govern ourselves. This is an exercise we have been working on in the west here to the Constitutional Working Group process. There are land claims arrangements made in the west. Self-government negotiations are going on. We are all looking at how western governance is going to look here in the west. There is ongoing process and things are evolving, changing as we go through these discussions. Generally, on this issue there is a need to focus on how we are going to do the work after division. This is what we are looking at in this process. The Electoral District Boundaries Commission will be a commission of three people who will go into the communities and listen to what people are saying in the communities, about this issue. Whether we set it up or not, I guess is the subject of debate here today. In a sense, I think it will be good to go into the communities to listen to what they have to say.
Mr. Speaker, I have made a presentation to the Deh Cho First Nations leadership meeting, last week, in Fort Simpson. I expressed the direction that this may be a possibility during this sitting, that this debate will occur. I did not receive any response from my presentation. Maybe they did respond, but I have not received anything official, yet. Again, the timing is that we knew this might be a possibility for this sitting. We were not too sure until the honourable Member for Inuvik made a motion late last week that he was intending to put this motion on the floor. We did have discussions in the past, while we were at the workshop, at the ski lodge. We mentioned this might be a possibility. I did mention it to different people in the communities. However, the community leaders, the community people are very busy as well. They are doing their own community government issues they have to deal with, land claims issues and discussions of this nature so perhaps they did not have the time to think about it. I have not received any comments for or against it from my communities. The timing is a concern here.
On a personal note, as an MLA for the Nahendeh area, I represent six communities. I represent the most communities in this Legislative Assembly. It covers a really beautiful part of the Northwest Territories. It is quite a large distance between the communities. It takes time to go to all these communities. It is not like a Member from Yellowknife where they could walk around their whole constituency in an hour. Mr. Henry could jog around his constituency in less than that, maybe. You compare the size of the territory you represent and the number of people. There are a lot of differences throughout the whole Northwest Territories. Each community is different from each other and so there is a need for good representation. Based on that, and there was a request that came in from the mayor from Liard that we do have an Electoral District Boundaries Commission. Based on that, I would say we should go to the communities and listen to what they have to say. That is from an MLA perspective.
From being in the government for the last two years plus some months, I know the workload that is required by the Ministers to do the work properly. To have good government, you need enough bodies there to do the job right. The present proposal was to keep the 14 MLAs in place and have six Ministers, a Speaker and seven Ordinary Members. I think the workload is going to be quite a bit. To do that for four years is going to be a lot of work. Just based on the reality that we are only human beings and even though you are committed and put in long hours, it still takes a toll on you. For good government, I think we have to consider ourselves, what kind of government do we want to have after division? Based on that as well, I tend to lean toward taking it to the people through a commission and see what we get out of it. Even if we do have a commission and go to the people and have public consultation, recommendations will be made by the three people who will be in the commission and it will come back here to us. We still have another kick at the can, once we get the views of the people in the communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
--Applause