Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I also want to thank the Minister and his officials for coming before the committee today in terms of this important issue on the Workers' Compensation Board. More importantly, as I see it, Mr. Chairman, is how is this going to affect the people in my community and my region, in the Sahtu region? What is that today and in the future that we can tell them in our communities that, you know, how this legislation, the things that we have, are going to talk about today is going to affect them? That they know if it's an aboriginal speaking person or a non-aboriginal speaking person. That they know these measures are getting to them, and how this legislation is going to take care of some of the workers in our community. The little guy, as I call them. We pay the big bucks for this type of service that we provide as legislators. So I want to know, and how is this going to be explained to my people and other people across the Northwest Territories who are in the same boat. How will it make life easier should something happen to them in the workforce?

Mr. Chairman, the issue sometimes gets confused and sometimes it gets pretty complex and I think any worker in the Northwest Territories will tell you, you know how hard it is sometimes and sometimes it's frustrating and it's a difficult job here. So we have to really think about the workers here and that who are in this type of position, what we're trying to give them as legislators.

I'm here because my people have put me here to work for them on their behalf on these type of issues here. That's where our tax dollars are going. That's where the services are. So I really want to stress that this is a very important piece of work. People sit on these boards here to work on behalf of our people and to see that the services are there for them there. As Mr. Braden has alluded to, and also Ms. Lee has talked about, the importance of this legislation.

I guess, Mr. Chairman, I really didn't see how this legislation was really working until I had a member of my community be affected by this and how hard that aboriginal person had to work even to get some kind of attention on this issue. All the work that we did, and this person is 70 years old, speaks the Slavey language, and me just being a first-time Member and the first year of this Legislature, I had to do work on his behalf. So I got introduced to it real fast. There were some gaps that needed to be fixed in this area here. At the end of the day, Mr. Speaker, it became frustrating not only for me, but for this person that I was representing on his behalf.

I think there's certainly some recommendations we need to look at and I'm really looking forward to seeing where these number of areas where service, client services, as the Minister has indicated in his statement, number of areas where client services can be improved.

I'd also like to ask the Minister in my discussions later on in terms of the communication plan and the protocol as to how this is going to be rolled out. The Minister has indicated in page 3 of his Minister's statement about the training program for employees. I certainly think that's a valid statement there for employees to get some training, but I also want to ask the Minister, has he, his board, considered training for some of the people in the communities on some of these things here? It's good to train the employees and that about their responsibilities and roles, but you also need to really get back into the community, understand to see what type of training needs for the community members or the workers there, what type of training that's needed for them. I don't know if that's feasible or not, but I think that's, you get one side all the amount of information, but the other side doesn't have it. They come to us, as legislators, and they come banging at the Minister's door in terms of what we need, so we have to be cognizant of that area here.

I'm not too sure how this is going to be rolled out in terms of the communication plan, but I'll leave that until I hear other questions by our colleagues here to talk about some

of the recommendations that were pointed out to us by the Auditor General, and as a committee we had some discussions already with the Minister on this issue here. So I want to say that it's really important that our people, the little guys in our community, understand how the worker's compensation is being developed and it's going to come out and how they're going to be protected or looked at in terms of who's going to help them in these areas here. I hear a lot of stories, Mr. Chairman, about injured workers and workers that have tried the system and I'm going to say for my own self, for my region, that we want to look at some of these issues that have impact on the aboriginal population, because a huge number of my people fit in that area.

So, Mr. Chairman, the closing remarks that I would have is that I'm certainly glad that the Minister is here with his officials and hoping we can have a good dialogue that would go forward with these, see the workers come out on top in terms of how do we take care of them. That's my sense and I look forward to further discussions on this.