Thank you, Madam Chair. The purpose of this bill is to support the effective delivery of services in both territories under the contract back arrangement for legal registries between the OIC and the GNWT Department of Justice.

Under the agreement, the parties will jointly work towards the implementation of an identical, but separate, electronic registration system under the Personal Property Security Act of each territory. Until then, the existing manual Document Registry in the GNWT Legal Registries Office will serve as a single system of registration for both territories.

To this end, the debenture filing requirements of the Companies Act, which will otherwise be repealed on March 31st in accordance with an existing provision of the Business Corporations Act that repeals the entire Companies Act, would be moved into the Business Corporations Act. At the same time, the actual registration of these debentures would be legislatively transferred into the document registry of all other security interest. This would occur the moment before division so that these provisions are duplicated in Nunavut.

Under the Nunavut Statutes Amendment Act, 1999, amendments to the document registry Act of Nunavut provide that registrations in the Northwest Territories document registry are registrations in Nunavut, resulting in a single registry for both territories until the document registry is replaced by the Personal Property Registry. Most of the amendments to the Personal Property Security Act in this bill are intended to allow for a wholly electronic registration system in which all registrations are submitted electronically.

The Securities Act amendments to this bill are intended to allow GNWT officials to administer the acts of both territories under the contracting arrangement and to do so effectively within a regulatory system which is increasingly a co-operative effort among all of the provinces and territories.

In closing, Madam Chair, I would like to acknowledge the role of the Office of the Interim Commissioner and the Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated in the review of this bill and would be pleased to answer any questions Members may have. Thank you, Madam Chair.