Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As Mrs. Groenewegen pointed out, as we gather here, people are gathering in Tuk to celebrate Vince Steen's life. I want to take a moment just to reflect on some of the more memorable things that we used to laugh about as ways of getting through some of the pressures here.

When I first knew Vince I thought of him as kind of a gruff, grouchy kind of man. But I soon found out that there was a very compassionate, very kind, very much a man of the people, a very warm, caring individual.

Vince used to come to my office early in the morning and we would sit and sort of assess what happened the day before and what was going to happen the rest of the day. I got to know him very well. He's very much a man of the people. I used to tease him, because I remember in going to his constituency meetings and he would go and sit with his constituents and grill us. Sometimes even grill his own department.

---Laughter

That was his way of saying, okay, I'll represent my people. Even if I am a Minister, I'm not going to let it go by. I remember him once sitting over here and even grilling a Minister in Committee of the Whole.

---Laughter

---Applause

He always had a very practical solution to any complex issue, and he had an incredible ability to be able to get right to the core of an issue. We would discuss things around and around in a circle in Cabinet and Vince, in one statement, would get right to the core; and usually, 99 percent of the time, he's right.

I remember one time the Member from North Slave, or now Monfwi, giving Vince a hard time as Minister of Transportation about the condition of the highway between here and Behchoko and telling him you can't even drive up to the speed limit. "What are you going to do about it, Minister?" Well, two days later Vince lowered the speed limit.

---Laughter

So, yes, he always got a bit of a trick to him, as well. More than anything else, except Betty and his family, Vince loved Transportation. I remember him being very devastated the day Transportation was taken from his portfolio. He really wanted to make sure that I was going to look after it in a way that he felt about it. I visited him in Tuk several times after he was no longer in politics and you'd see his eyes light up when he talked about opening up the airport after a blizzard or doing things with equipment. He loved being an equipment operator and was a great one.

He loved to play bridge. Whenever he could find a partner, he would come to my house and play bridge with my wife and I and sometimes he'd have a glass of wine. He's very honest and very candid man. He never minced words. I gave him a glass of my homemade wine one day. He looked at me after he took a sip and said, "What animal peed in this?"

---Laughter

That was Vince. He's a formidable bridge opponent and...