Thank you, Mr. Chairman. When I introduced the motion, I tried to follow the rule of making a statement that is quite narrow and to the motion, but I do appreciate the nature of the discussion by necessity and, more importantly, took on wider statements on the part of the Members. I appreciate very much all the comments and the points the Members made. I think we are doing good work here. I respect everybody's opinion with regard to that.
Mr. Chairman, I think it should be made very clear that at no time during discussions of this bill in the committee or in the public hearings did we ever hear anyone suggesting that we need to do more or that anyone suggested that we ought to do more to address the drug situation as well as alcohol and drug bootlegging. The question here and the
support of the motion is not against all those important issues. I think that should be made very clear.
The question here is whether or not the SCAN legislation is the one that will address those issues and do it in a way that makes sense to people and that is applicable to the North. The question is whether or not the SCAN legislation, as written, is going to do that and I think we have received overwhelming input that this is not going to do that as written. Many people support the spirit of the bill, but they would like us to bring it back and work on it more.
Mr. Chairman, let me just remind everybody here, and Mr. Yakeleya suggested that, the Workers' Compensation Act, the Liquor Act, Employment Standards Act, Public Health Act, all of them took years and years of work. I am not saying you should work for years and years to delay it, but these are complex pieces of legislation. SCAN legislation has a wide vision and a very big scope and it's going to set up a whole new infrastructure for dealing with the issue at hand and I think it needs a lot more detail. Even Bill 13, Change of Name Act, which is a simple procedure on changing your name, had about 12 clauses on how to address that step by step. So surely we need to do a lot more work on that.
As the committee chair, I recommend to the House here that we will write a detailed report on the findings that we heard and I will make sure the next government will look at that.
Another thing is we don't have party politics here, so it's not like a new party comes in and they wipe out the old party politics clean and they introduce a new party system. The new consensus government will look at all the unfinished business, and obviously this is going to be accompanied in that and I am sure it will be thoroughly addressed and I am sure it will be spoken about during the campaign as well.
Mr. Chairman, I want to tell the RCMP officers all over the Territories, who I know have supported this legislation, who I know felt this was a useful tool, I respect the work the RCMP do and this should not be taken as anything against what they are trying to do. I think we have civilian rules here and we have responsibilities to make sure the powers we give to the RCMP and other RCMP-like officers are written in a way that are clear and have sufficient checks and balances. I just wanted to state that I look forward to working on this. Thank you so much.
---Applause