Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, Bill 15 is intended to meet the requirements set down by the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories with respect to electoral districts in the Northwest Territories.
The main purpose of the bill is to revise the electoral districts of Hay River, Inuvik and Yellowknife to establish five additional electoral districts. The bill also revises the electoral district for Deh Cho to include the community of Enterprise.
In addition, this bill;
- eliminates ten current electoral districts that will be located in Nunavut on the establishment of that new territory;
- makes minor amendments to the descriptions of some of the other existing electoral districts by replacing references to the Nunavut Settlement Area Boundary with reference to the Nunavut - Northwest Territories Boundary; and
- provides that it will come into force on the first dissolution of the Legislative Assembly after April 1, 1999.
Yesterday, Mr. Chairman, we debated the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Government Operations based on their review of the bill.
Cabinet is very concerned about the comments of several honourable Members during our discussion in committee of the whole yesterday. In particular, we are concerned about the comments made by some that we have rejected the committee's recommendations on this bill. Cabinet has not, I repeat, has not rejected any of the recommendations.
In fact, Mr. Chairman, Cabinet agreed in principle with all of the recommendations of the committee with the exception of establishing a limit of six Members on Cabinet. We also asked for more time to review the issue of whether to pursue a legal reference as this is a complex legal issue and we need time to do a careful review.
Our objective in making our comments yesterday, which I thought I explained adequately in my opening, was to provide our initial position to the recommendations based on a 24-hour review, since we received the report.
It is important to note that Members of the committee have undertaken their work for the past several months and have had and opportunity to fully consider these issues and discuss the implications. We expect the same courtesy, Mr. Chairman.
Members will note that most of our comments yesterday concerned the process for implementing the recommendations. Now that the recommendations of the committee have been formal motions of the House, we intend to give them full consideration. We will report back to the Members of this House as soon as possible. Equally important, we intend to consult with the appropriate stakeholders to determine the support for each recommendation.
For example, on the issue of the Constitutional and Electoral Reform Commission, we indicated that we were in full support of the intent of this recommendation. In fact, we intend to immediately consult with aboriginal leaders and other stakeholders to consider their views on the recommendations and to determine how best to proceed.
Mr. Chairman, several Members seemed to take the issue with the government pursuing an intergovernmental forum. It is somewhat confusing that this concept would be criticized given that it is intended to bring together people, aboriginal and public governments, to discuss on an ongoing basis, our intergovernmental relationship here in the North. This, in our view, seemed to be the intent of the committee's recommendation on negotiations of a political accord. With that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to address Bill 15. Thank you.