Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the work of this committee and I know they’ve given lots of thought and debate and discussion to this controversial recommendation. I do not support this motion and I don’t take the use of it by other governments, all of which engage in party politics, as a model that we should necessarily follow or a reason for following this model.

Primarily I find the use of such devices to be disruptive and to reflect a lack of due diligence and due degree of attention in the proceedings of the Committee of the Whole in this House. Ultimately, of course, the most important tools we have to bring to the table are our minds, our awareness and our full attention and focus. The action proposed in this motion would detract from this focus either for those using it or those sitting adjacent.

There is one instrument that I have become aware of that I think would also address the expense of this approach and this would be an expensive approach and our communications, despite some of the challenges we face in this House are becoming more and more expensive as this government allows additional tools to be used. A tool to consider might be the e-readers, which are an electronic reader and can be embedded in the surface of our desk. They are very unobtrusive. We wouldn’t be typing on it but you could call up documents under consideration. It would allow increased focus and attention to the discussion.

I am a firm believer that we should be listening to others’ perspective on issues in their constituencies. After all, we are Members of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories. We have a responsibility to be addressing the concerns of all the people of the Northwest Territories and, of course, with particular focus on our constituents’ concerns.

So I do not support this motion for those reasons and thank you for this opportunity to comment, Mr. Chair.