Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’ve done a lot of work in my time in the communities within my governments. I’ve participated on the front line with a lot of community workers, teachers, parents, concerned Members, leaders in our communities. What it always comes down to is everybody sees it

in their communities. The social issues that impact our community can be addressed by putting money and investing into our early childhood development. Like I said when I was talking earlier, I thought this government was working on this already. I had the assumption and confidence that our government was working to make our communities and economy a lot healthier and safer. To come into this government as a new Member and to see that eight months into this Assembly we’re actually asking the government to invest money into early childhood development that’s going to our population and our residents for years to come. I’m very proud that on this side we get the chance to vote in favour of a motion to support our families back home, to support our constituents, to support our communities and our families, to support our educators, our health practitioners, the people in the justice system, all the departments that are affected by the lack of investment into this initiative, which is early childhood development.

It’s stated that every dollar you invest in early childhood development, the returns are about $6 to $8. That alone should say that we should be investing more money in there. As we go through the budget, some of the line items that I’ve been seeing are very shocking to me and the lack of funding in some areas is even more shocking. As this government, we have the opportunity so that when we invest today, that in years to come we’re going to start to see a healthier, more educated group of youth, a healthier, more educated generation of adults in our Northwest Territories and in our communities so that we can start to see the benefits of what we do today in years to come.

I thank all Members here for their comments, for their passion, their concern for our people of the Northwest Territories. I’d also like to give the Premier an opportunity to allow his Cabinet to vote freely on this, to allow their Members back home, their family, their communities, show them the support that they need for this early childhood development.

Mr. Speaker, I’m going to be asking for a recorded vote. Thank you.