Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be supporting this amendment as well. I have to say it was almost unanimous, the input I heard people speaking very clearly to not try and define these sorts of activities, that abuse and cruelty was certainly not acceptable in any situation. I have to stress again that these were people from all walks of life and certainly included the most respected of Aboriginal leaders who represented the essence of tradition and traditional practices. Again, they spoke in a very clear way that helped me tremendously in
discerning what is appropriate here and for which I am very appreciative of, as I said before.
I think some other amendments that we have incorporated are a good effort to try and make sure that this doesn’t go beyond what we wanted, that it serves all people and it has been my experience that people enforcing this legislation are typically long-term Northerners who have a strong grounding in understanding of our society. Legislation is a blunt instrument, but it does tend to reflect the overwhelming trends in our society and the best thinking that we can capture in legislation. I think that’s what we’re dealing with here, and again the comments have been very clear to me. On that basis I will represent those people that I’ve heard from directly and support this proposed amendment. Mahsi.