Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m really torn about supporting this motion. I haven’t had a chance to talk to people in Hay River about it yet. I think I’ve only ever had one concern ever brought to my constituency office about the issue of distracted driving and that person doesn’t live in Hay River anymore, they moved away.
Mr. Speaker, driving in Yellowknife is very different than even driving in Hay River, which is the second largest community. I think Hay River has two sets of traffic lights now, but for many, many years we had none and I think we have one four-way stop, unlike Yellowknife where every second intersection is something different. Like, one’s a two-way, the next one you come to is a four-way. Like, you go out to get a coffee at Tim Horton’s, you’ve got traffic converging from all directions and it’s a bit of a jungle driving in Yellowknife, to be honest with you. And your main thoroughfare, Franklin Avenue, has people crossing and turning and we don’t have any roads like that in Hay River. We’ve got the Mackenzie Highway, which is our main thoroughfare, but we don’t have that same kind of activity to go on. So I haven’t had a chance to talk to people in Hay River about whether they think this would be a good idea, but if Yellowknife wants it, I think the City of Yellowknife should enact it and I would support it, because my daughter lives here and I would really like her to be banned from using her cell phone when she’s driving.
---Laughter
But as far as Hay River goes, Mr. Speaker, honestly, I haven’t had a chance to consult people. I know there are a lot of businesspeople who are around town on their cell phones and I don’t know how it would impact how people do their work, but I am having a hard time doing this on a carte blanche across the whole Territory. I would support a motion to ban cell phones in Yellowknife or hand-held devices in Yellowknife, but I don’t think I can support it for the whole Territory. Thank you.