Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My colleague brought forward a worthy motion with many positive points. Regretfully, the point that affects me and my constituents is that it increases the cost by further registration. I cannot support this motion.
The Members have spoken about the benefit to all NWT residents. Once again, I have to disagree with my colleagues; it is not benefiting all the NWT residents. I’ve got a constituency with many small
communities and road systems, and they have to depend on the bigger vehicles to move around, to move their goods. In fact, many of my communities don’t even have a consistent store, so they do have to travel quite a bit.
Having the benefits of a smaller vehicle is just not advantageous to them. It’s not a choice for them. They do have to have these larger vehicles in order to get around. In the urban centres — where you have nice roads and you’re using it daily and you have a choice — it’s probably a necessity that you move to smaller vehicles to do your running around from one end of Yellowknife to the other, to do your grocery shopping and move your kids around. But in the smaller communities there’s just not that kind of environment that’s conducive to this type of change in our legislation.
Some of the points — that the Department of Transportation should be researching this type of thing — I agree with, but by bringing it forward in the motion, I just cannot support it in this form.
Another thing is that Members made an issue of climate change and the ability of our constituents to think green. All those are good points. Again, for my constituency it’s not a choice. It becomes an issue of cost and how it impacts their pocketbooks. With those points I just cannot support this motion. I will be voting against it.