Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In case anyone was wondering, I wanted to let you know that I'm speaking in favour of the motion.

---Laughter

Mr. Speaker, I had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Hamilton when he was Deputy Clerk, going back to the early 1980s, late 1970s, when he was there. There has been a lot of change in this Legislative Assembly since then. I was always intrigued with that little Scotsman running around everywhere. Those were the days when the Legislative Assembly used to travel around to communities and he had the task of making sure that everything got to where it was supposed to be and so on. I was always amazed that we were able to do that in those days.

He also had to put up with a lot of other kind of changes. This Legislative Assembly, before it had all of these rules that Mr. Hamilton brought to us, was a much more rocking and rolling place. He had to deal with cups flying across the Chamber, people getting up and smacking somebody because they didn't quite like the response they gave and so on. There have been a lot of changes.

Mr. Hamilton has also certainly shown himself to me in the last four years to be a real encyclopedia of knowledge on rules, on Beauchesne's, on precedents that have happened in the House in previous years and so on.

He certainly has not lost his energy. I get a lot of amusement sitting here watching him and watching his body language, watching his eyes and so on as things are going on in the House here. He's keeping track of everything that's going on. I also watch him move around. When I see him coming down that hallway upstairs with a furrow in his brow, I get out of the way because there's something happening here and I just hope that he's not coming into my office.

I have learned to appreciate David's support, David's help to all of us in this House and his ability, as someone else has said, to be able to calm us down, bring order back into the process when it's necessary. I, too, want to express my appreciation for his support and do welcome him back into this Chamber when he's back in Yellowknife. Thank you.

---Applause