Mr. Chairman, I believe the Member is correct in her interpretation of our intent and I think Members will know the three recent appointments to Territorial Court, the three recent judges, are all from the

NWT bar and I suspect that that will likely continue to be the case. We will have most of our judges come from the local bar. This is in no way attempting to change that. In looking at the provisions around residency, we were concerned that there was a problem here potentially and that you can imagine the scenario where you might have somebody who has practiced in the Territories for many years, takes a job outside the jurisdiction, Nunavut or in the South for six months and there's an opening on the bench and would make a great candidate but wouldn't be eligible if they weren't resident. We don't want to exclude people in a situation like that. So this is not to indicate that we are looking to fill our bench with lawyers from the South. This is to suggest that we needed to clarify this point in the legislation and we were concerned about the provisions potentially being interpreted the wrong way and running afoul of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.