Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in my opinion this is probably the most significant piece of legislation that this Assembly is going to deal with, and I am quite pleased that we got to this point. There has been some comment in the press lately about the consultation that has taken place on this bill and some comment about its future.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that I see this bill and the way this was handled as a model for an open consultative process in the development of legislation. This bill was substantially modified in the course of the two years of consultation that has taken place. As the Minister said in his opening remarks, he'll be proposing further amendments, as will the committee today be proposing further amendments to the bill based on what we heard through the public consultation process.

I have been somewhat surprised by the comment in the press because of the number of occasions for comment and the number of changes that have been incorporated to date, that there have been some people who have recently said that we are moving too quickly. I am not sure how they could not have known about opportunities to make comment over the past two years. Mr. Chairman, I am satisfied that residents had lots of opportunity to influence the final shape of this bill, and as I said we will continue to make changes today to continue to reflect the comments that we heard during the consultations.

Mr. Chairman, of course we did not accept all the recommendations that we heard while we were travelling around, but they were all considered. The committee debated all the recommendations that we heard. We discussed them with the Minister. Some were accepted and some were not. I think we have set out in our committee report the reasons for accepting or not accepting recommendations, but the report clearly lays out that we heard the recommendations.

Mr. Chairman, I am comfortable with this bill, particularly in light of what I know it will look like when we finish with it. I think it sets a very high standard and it puts us in the lead, for instance, in such things as making social condition a prohibited ground for discrimination. That is something that we will be leaders in Canada with that in our legislation. It does represent a significant improvement over the Fair Practices Act. One of the most important things in this Act is the educative role that it sets out for the Commission. This is really important. Since we have never had a comprehensive human rights bill in the past, it will be very important that we have well versed and well respected people as commissioners who are able to ensure that the public is well informed about their rights and responsibilities under this legislation, and able to make sure that Northerners are able to take advantage of the legislation once we set it in place.

As I said earlier, I am happy to be here today. This is one of the pieces of legislation that I said in the election campaign that I would work very hard to try and see in the House, so again I say that I am very happy to see us get to this point and look forward to moving through the bill on a clause by clause basis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.