Mr. Speaker, I, too, will speak in favour of his motion and I compliment my colleague Mr. Menicoche for picking this up in his travels and bringing it to us for our consideration.
Mr. Speaker, Ms. Lee has already referenced this Assembly, this Chamber, as an outstanding example. As I was thinking geographically around the Northwest Territories, I think one of the very few examples of a public building that has made an effort to bring the art of its peoples into the building and not just in the sense of hanging something on a wall or putting something in a display case, but truly bringing the materials and the styles and the shapes of the North into the Chamber.
Mr. Speaker, the theme wall behind you is a perfect example of that. The design is reflecting many things to many different people rendered in zinc, one of our non-renewable resources materials. The glass panels, again, art that has a function in here, very handsomely reflects some aspects of our northern country and our heritage.
When we think about outstanding public art in the rest of Canada and the world, there are things that have become icons, symbols that truly represent the people of a given nation. Things that were established with some controversy; we have public sculpture that has been ridiculed and run down. We have buildings, enormous structures, things like the Eiffel Tower that were not established easily by governments of the day, but they are enormously important symbols now if we take that one of the country, nation, and people of France. It's something that I hope the government takes very seriously, not as jeepers, where are we going to find one more percent to roll into the capital cost of something, but something that can truly be looked at as part of the investment that we are making in the building as we have shown here, Mr. Speaker, in our Chamber where art can be combined with function and where it can be used to make that statement and reflect who we are, as much as Mr. Menicoche has said, provide an economic opportunity for artists and artisans to come together.
If I have a plea to add to this, it would be to think about this well in advance of the actual beginning or the start of a planning and approval process. Bringing art into the function and the story and the presence of our buildings is really where to start this kind of thing. I know that what we have here would not have been achieved, Mr. Speaker, if it hadn't been for the architects, designers, thinkers and the planners of that time who said here is what we are going to do with this building and look at it.
So we have already done it. Let's do some more of it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.