Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Standing Committee on Governance and Economic Development did a number of public hearings on this, starting in late August and into September and then finally doing clause by clause here in Yellowknife on October 1st. There were 52 motions to amend the bill which were carried by committee and concurred with by the Minister.

Mr. Chairman, a few other highlights that I'd like to put out here before we get into future detail is the issue the Minister just mentioned in the area of settlements. The committee felt strongly enough that we prepared a committee motion to that effect.

Another major concern throughout these changes were in the area of the liabilities and a number of changes to help reduce the liability concerns for communities and how they would be impacted by insurance and the premiums. Committee had some discussion around that in trying to ensure there was a fair balance between protecting municipalities and limiting your liability, as well as ensuring that residents of the territory had a fair opportunity to address their concerns if they felt they were injured or a mishap has occurred that was due to the poor upkeep of municipal infrastructure or roads in the community. So there was some discussion about that, and committee felt that with the discussion with the NWTAC personnel we felt that we could agree with what was brought forward.

One of the other things that was fairly contentious initially was the employees on council. Committee did not agree with the bill as it came forward which would have allowed employees of councils to be elected members. Upon the public hearing process and hearing from different mayors and those responsible for community leadership and hearing that they too were of that opinion, we did manage to work with the Minister and again remove that section with the Minister's concurrence.

One of the other areas that was a concern to committee Members was the initial bill came forward with the market disruption policy, and the committee had a fair bit of discussion back and forth on this about the merits of why that would be in the bill. Without hearing a good reason as to why it would be put forward, we've discussed with the Minister and we had his concurrence as we passed six motions that removed that from the section of the bill. Committee Members felt that the existing situations that are now used by municipalities are adequate.

There were a number of other amendments that were not very big, but there were a few of them and because of the way the act is done up meant for a lot of amendments. So that took a fair bit of time.

But committee feels generally as we bring this forward that it's been a long time in coming. We heard from the Association of Communities that much work has been done with their leaders and councils on that area, and felt that this is needed and it's good to see it come forward. So we look forward to bringing this to conclusion and hopefully bringing it to third reading in the last days of this Assembly.

Before I close, Mr. Chairman, I did mention about the committee motions and I would like to move a committee motion at this time.