Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to use my last Member's statement of this 15th Assembly to reflect on my just over two and a half years here. It has been a privilege, and I mean that sincerely, to serve the people of Inuvik Twin Lakes. I look forward to the opportunity to reaffirm their confidence in me and come back and do some more battle in the 16th.
I thoroughly enjoyed working with my colleagues on this side of the House, especially those in Social Programs. We had many discussions; we had differences of opinion; but you always acted in the best interests of your constituents and I respect you a lot for that.
Mr. Bell, Mr. Dent, Mr. Handley, you're all leaving this Assembly and I wish you well in your future plans. We've had some agreements; I've agreed with a lot of things you've said. There are some things that you've said that I haven't agreed with and I wanted to agree with you, but then that would have made us both wrong, so I didn't.
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I've enjoyed sitting here next to my colleague Mr. Hawkins. It's been an interesting two and a half years, Robert.
To Mr. Braden, our elder on this side of the House, I counted on Mr. Braden a lot for advice and he'd always lean over and tell me what we were doing, so I appreciate that.
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I believed him for the first week; after that, I was on my own.
We have a job to do here -- it's not a job, it's something that we chose to do -- and that's almost impossible to do without the support of people that put you here, people that work to get you here. Then once you get in here, Mr. Mercer and his staff really put you to work. I remember my first couple of days here where I went to torture room B and had my own private orientation.
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Also without the support of your family, it's almost impossible to do what we do. My wife is up in the gallery there and we've been married for 28 years now and she's
had to make a bit of sacrifice for me being gone all the time; at least I hope it was a sacrifice.
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So to all my colleagues in here, I wish you all well in whatever you decide to do. To those that are running for re-election, I wish you well and the best of luck. I pray things work out well for everyone in here. Thank you.
---Applause