Thank you, Mr. Speaker. How many of us have sat in the waiting room at the motor vehicle office watching Food Network while we’re waiting to renew our driver’s licence or vehicle registration? And only if you’re from a large centre do you get that chance, because if you’re from a small centre you don’t have the chance to sit and watch the Food Network while you sit for a long period of time to get that driver’s licence renewed.

Quite frankly, this is a service that should be moving to go on-line. In many provinces across Canada, residents, in the comfort of their own homes, in front of their own TVs and computers can renew their own licences, cancel their vehicles, licence, registration, schedule road and knowledge tests, request driver records, discard vehicle and cancel temporary licence and registration. They can change the address on their driver’s licence, make payments of any other motor vehicle service, request drivers’ abstracts and even, in some cases, replace drivers’ licences and IDs, and that’s all on-line.

The province of Ontario even offers mail service to send you the stickers for your licence plates to do your updated renewal. Even provinces with limited numbers of services provide these types of services to their residents because they feel on-line services are important.

This is the type of information we should be working towards to convey to our citizens. We live in a day and age where we shop on-line, we pay our bills and taxes on-line, we read the latest newspapers, and we even book flights to exotic locations. Some of us have applied to university on-line, and heck, in cases like myself, I’ve even bought paints on-line. But I have no doubt that people are even watching the proceedings of the House on-line from, again, the comfort of their desktop, laptop and even, in some cases, mobile phones.

So with all these fantastic services all provided on-line, it’s time that we move to simple services such as driver abstract options on-line. I think the Department of Transportation could be looking at this on a serious note. Frankly, the issue I see right now is a lot of good citizens here don’t have 45 minutes or longer to go sit down at the DMV for simple services. And if you live in a community, should you be forced to drive an hour just to go get your civil services through the DMV? I think this would be a great leap forward to the citizens of the Northwest Territories and I would think that it would demonstrate that we’re tuned in to territorial issues,

this being simply one of them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.