Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Being a member of the committee, I don't want to abuse that privilege, but I just want to say a few comments about the tremendous experience that it has been for us to work on this committee. Maybe it's the wonderful speech that our colleague Mr. Ootes gave or it's the rain outside or it's the mood here for nostalgia. There is no question, for me anyway, there are many different aspects to the work of a politician and while we spend a lot of time dealing with the bread and butter issues about different funding programs and so on, I believe that the other side of the privilege and the opportunity we have as a legislator is to look at some of the larger questions that come our way and I do believe, as Mr. Braden said, that there are no others like this anywhere else in Canada or around the world. I think we are really breaking new ground here and we are doing things that have not been done before in the scale that is being done and in the numbers that are being done.

There is also the question, at the very beginning stage, this may be the first document that's been produced about the implementation of self-government although we know that this issue has been with us for many, many years. The one thing that kept coming to me that I really wanted to think about and made me think was the tremendous need out there on the part of the people for a lot of answers and information about what it means. The more I heard from the people, I realized we really needed a place for a conversation or a dialogue, a territory -wide conversation and dialogue, about what it would mean for us to live in a world of post-self-government implementation in the NWT.

As Mr. Braden stated, it's about a beginning, not about an ending of anything and I know that this will give it a good start for us to look at what the NWT would look like many years down the road. I think it became very apparent to us that these changes will not take place overnight, but it will be a process of incremental and step-by-step change and one that the Government of the Northwest Territories has to play an important role in getting ready and preparing our people for, along with the partnership of other governments.

So the image that I am going to leave you with is the fact that this is just the beginning, and it is a beginning of a process that would open up all sorts of challenges and questions and opportunities and to emphasize the need for a territory-wide conversation and dialogue about what all this means to us. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.