Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I welcome the Minister of Justice's commitment earlier today to introduce family violence prevention legislation by June and it, in some ways, makes the motion somewhat moot. I think it's also still important for us, as Members of this House, to have the formal motion on record as a statement of our intent to see legislation brought forward.

This has been a long-term process. A couple of years ago, I raised the issue of this type of legislation in the House. At the time, the Premier had named my colleague from Hay River South to be Minister responsible for coordinating the development of an action plan to combat family violence. I asked her about such legislation. She told the House that she agreed that the NWT should have family violence prevention legislation and she said she would work on making sure that it came forward. I wrote to the Minister of Justice to ask him to bring forward such legislation. Minister Antoine was the Minister at the time and he told the House that he saw this type of legislation as a priority. He said he would work to bring such legislation forward by the spring session in 2002.

In the House on February 26, 2002, Minister Miltenberger confirmed the critical nature of this type of legislation and noted that the Members had identified family violence prevention legislation as a priority. He committed to write to the Minister of Justice to push for introduction of the bill.

Then on March 6, 2002, the Minister of Justice, Mr. Allen, said he was committed to move as fast as possible on this piece of legislation. During that same budget session, he said that preparatory work would be concluded in June 2002.

So, Mr. Speaker, we have a long record of commitments and the one made by the Minister earlier today was the most clear. I look forward to working with the Minister to see this legislation brought forward and passed. He has my personal commitment for cooperation and assistance.

Mr. Speaker, family violence prevention legislation should be just one part of a clearly articulated strategy for responding to and preventing family violence. We know that that sort of legislation alone is not the answer, but it is one key part of the arsenal needed to fight family violence. The Minister talked today about looking at other jurisdictions, but making sure that our legislation works for our residents. That's a good idea. Some jurisdictions like the Yukon have undertaken reviews of their legislation and have identified strengths and weaknesses. We can learn much from our sister territory to the west. The Yukon review found the legislation made a difference, an improvement, by increasing the protections available to victims of violence. The review team found that the rate of use of emergency orders under the act, taking account of relative population, was the highest in Canada among those jurisdictions with similar legislation. Unfortunately, since the rate of domestic violence in the NWT is even higher than in the Yukon, I think we can probably expect similar rates of use here.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister has said we will see family violence prevention legislation in June. I thank him again for that commitment. This is important to far too many of our constituents not to move it forward as soon as possible.

As I have already outlined, four Ministers of the government, including the Minister today, have said that we need this kind of legislation. The Minister has committed to bring it forward by June, so I am hoping now that the government will also vote in favour of the motion so that we can unanimously demonstrate our commitment to confront family violence. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause