Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is the first time in the life of this Assembly that I have used this opportunity. I had not anticipated doing it today, but on the topic of this significance and with so many of my colleagues, who have taken advantage of it or seen the need to talk about it, I thought I should get up too, and at least I would not be conspicuous by my absence.

Mr. Speaker, this was indeed one of the compelling reasons for me to run as a candidate. I would like to think it is one of the reasons that I got elected, because I believe that the consensus government was not working well, that it needed reform, and that it needed to be changed. It was not, Mr. Speaker, a rejection of the consensus system.

It has been easy for some of my colleagues here to label me a party politics guy. I am not. I am probably going to have to keep saying that over and over and over and I hope it catches. I do believe that the system that we have, at least the system that we envision, Mr. Speaker, is indeed the right one for the Northwest Territories.

I lived in the Yukon from 1976 to 1986, Mr. Speaker, and those were the years in which partisan politics were introduced in our sister territory to the west. I did not like what had happened in the time that I lived there. I found it, Mr. Speaker, to be a divisive and a polarizing influence on what was already quite a small and I will use the word fragile, multi-layered northern society. It is not unlike the one here in the Northwest Territories.

I think we must take some steps, Mr. Speaker, to avoid going down that path. The way that I would like to see consensus government returning to, Mr. Speaker, because I have been told by Members who had experience in the previous Assembly here, but going back three and four assemblies, perhaps they had it right then. They had mechanisms, they had ways between the various committees and mechanisms of the Assembly of the day to get together and work out their issues, hammer out their differences and be able to come forward and move issues and make progress on things.

I said it a couple days ago and I would like to follow through. I think over the past three Assemblies, Mr. Speaker, we have engineered out, we have organized and chartered that kind of capacity, that collaborative kind of capacity is gone now. What is missing is something that I think I would like to go further than some of my colleagues who have said that they would like to be -- who said that consensus government can work through the committee system. We have to go even further than that. I would like to be involved, Mr. Speaker, in the exploration stage of issues where we can actually work together on designing the solutions, defining the issues, and bringing many more voices into this kind of thing than really what we have today, which is essentially the departments, the Ministers and Cabinet. A committee system today is really restricted to but one, I think, essential power, Mr. Speaker, and that is the power of veto. We do not like something, we will tell the Minister. We will tell Cabinet and it is probably gone, but in the stages leading up to that, we really do not have a consistent and I think a meaningful way of making a difference and helping to move issues along. We have become much like any other parliament or Legislature in the rest of Canada, where there is government elected with a mandate for the people, which I think is kind of a handy thing, and an opposition. There are big gaps and big secrets between them.

We do not need to do that, Mr. Speaker. It is interesting to reflect here that this whole notion, this whole dark, ugly notion of party politics may have crept up upon us, and if we are not careful, it just may overtake. Let's do the math. Let's look at the numbers. We are seven people in our Executive Council or Cabinet. How many people have indicated, Mr. Speaker, that they voted for or would vote for a motion to remove the Premier, and really, Mr. Speaker, it is a move of confidence against the government. There are seven on this side. Four of us, myself included, have said we believe the stability and the institution of continuing our government. We have an interesting dynamic here, Mr. Speaker, seven, seven, and four. Are we going to allow this to overtake, at least the next year of this Assembly? Are we going to allow it to set the tone, to become the model for future Assemblies? I sure hope not.

I am a proponent of reform, of consensus, Mr. Speaker, not its rejection. I will say it again and again and again, I am not for party politics. I do have some plans about how I believe we could improve the system of consensus government and how, Mr. Speaker, we could give the vote a much more direct say in the leadership and the mandate of a government.

I would much prefer though, Mr. Speaker, to pick myself the time and place and venue in which I will release those plans, those ideas, those proposals, and I would only ask that you stay tuned.

Meanwhile, Mr. Speaker, to conclude my reply to the opening address, I would like to say to my constituents that they can count on me to continue the promise and the pledge that I made to them when they accepted me as their MLA, and that is that I am going to continue to represent their best interests to the very best of my ability, issue by issue, to try to make the right decisions on behalf of the constituents of Great Slave. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.