Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on this International Women's Day, I want to talk about women in leadership. A question often asked of me as an elected woman is why aren't there more women in politics. This is an interesting question and I am not sure I know the answer to that question, but I hear people speculate about it.

One theory is that women don't support other women. I have to tell you that certainly has not been my experience. Another theory is that men don't support women. I have to say that neither has that been my experience. One other theory is that it takes a woman to champion women's issues. Mr. Speaker, I think if that were true then we would have to concede to the flipside of that, that women could not be expected to address a wide range of issues. I have personally heard many times in my 11 years in this House men stand and passionately speak to the issue of family violence, childcare, child protection and women's health issues over that period of time.

So I think we should not fall into the trap of trying to categorize men and women. I think we all have a role to play and women should be able to cover every issue that could possibly be raised in this House.

Mr. Speaker, maybe there are a lot of reasons why there aren't more women in leadership, but I don't think we can package it up categorically or absolutely and attribute it to any particular reason. I have been a Member of this House for almost 12 years and I can't think of a time when the gender factor in my relationship to issues or my constituency was an issue. Surely no one would support or not support someone solely on the basis of their gender. I prefer to think that the voters would look at the qualifications, attributes and experience of a candidate, and I would hope that they would. There are certainly many women in our communities that have demonstrated outstanding leadership in many areas with impressive credentials to take their experience to a new level of leadership.

Rather than pondering the past fortunes of women in leadership, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that the future does look brighter. When we look at our educational institutions in areas of medicine, science, engineering, and law, we see that the statistics in terms of the female participation in those areas of leadership is constantly growing.

So, Mr. Speaker, I, too, today would like to recognize the outstanding women of the Northwest Territories that are being honoured this year, thank them for what they do in our communities and with an upcoming federal and territorial election, I encourage people to...