Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On the heels of many statements made in this House today on this motion, I'd like to just, for the record, thank the Members for bringing this motion forward and to put on record that I will be abstaining from this motion.
Mr. Speaker, I could tell you that in my entire time that I've been here I have never abstained on any motion. In fact, I have always taken a firm position and always vocalized my position. But without going into any details about this issue in general, and perhaps it may be true that I'm reading this motion and the whole issue much more broadly, but I'd rather air on the side of being too broad than being too narrow in the chance that we may in any way jeopardize the core cases that are before the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories where there are two parties in action and one of them being the government.
Mr. Speaker, I hope that in future I'll be able to speak more on this. But for now I think I have decided that it's most prudent for me in acting on my own principle and the respect for the separate independence of this Legislature to make decisions and the court to make their own decisions, and for Wekeezhii board and any other institutions and duly authorized bodies to make the decisions independently from others that I feel that I must abstain. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.