Madam Chair, thank you. My remarks will be brief. First of all to acknowledge the willingness of the Minister, Mr. Roland, to accept the pleas from a number of us on this side, myself included, to engage in the review and in the modernization of this bill. I believe we are the third Assembly in more than a decade to have attempted to do this and we can actually check this one off as something that was long overdue. So I want to acknowledge, again, the Minister's willingness to engage, and, of course, the work that he and his staff and contractors have done to get us to this day.
Madam Chair, I believe that the greatest achievement, if you will, in this bill is not so much in the technical areas or the modernization or even the areas in which we're focusing on offences and penalties and where we want to make changes in how those are regarded. You know, we're bringing in minimum fines, we're bringing in more attention to illegal supply and distribution of liquor. I think the greatest thing here, Madam Chair, is that we have come off almost, I think, sort of a philosophy of government that a set of centralized rules and standards will work for all situations in all communities in all regions in the NWT. We have dispensed with that. We are enabling communities through an improved plebiscite mechanism to take more control of the way liquor will and can be distributed and managed in their own communities. I think that is a real leap forward, Madam Chair, in the way government is allowed to be managed and directed by the people who are closest to its results. So I think that's a considerable achievement. In that, Madam Chair, I hope that communities will undertake to engage in debates, engage in discussion in community action about how they can change the way liquor is administered in their communities. I don't think this is going to be easy, Madam Chair. We have so many, sort of, I think, conventions and systems, if you will, tolerances that have been built up in communities about the way that we put up with bootlegging, with various kinds of behaviour. This is a way the communities can take at least some control for themselves in the way this can be changed. As I say, I don't anticipate this is going to be easy, but it's going to be very necessary, Madam Chair, if the people of the NWT are going to do a more effective job of curbing the abuse and the cost that alcohol brings in this society. Those are my comments, Madam Chair. It's a very good piece of work. I'm proud to have been part of it. Thank you.