Madam Chair, I was actually just coming to my last bullet. The bottom line is we understand the flexibility. We get that, but this jurisdiction isn’t a larger jurisdiction where there is significant capacity. Our budgets are incredibly limited in legal aid. We have very little money and that money is not increasing. The feds haven’t increased their contribution. They’re not going to increase the contribution, yet the costs continue to go up. Every time the costs go up and the federal contribution stays the same, that money has to come from the Government of the Northwest Territories. We know our budgets are limited. So if we create a secondary layer of administration regardless of the cost, that can only come from one place, and that comes from the front-line delivery. We believe that would be inappropriate. We want to focus on the front-line delivery.
In closing, there is a significant number of high-calibre lawyers out in the Northwest Territories currently, who have both administrative and legal skills. By way of example, our current acting executive director is an indigenous Aboriginal lawyer from the Northwest Territories, from the Beaufort-Delta, I believe, who has solid management skills. If we were to change this position so this person didn’t need to be to be an executive director, that person may not even be interested in the job if they don’t require a lawyer to do it. We would be losing. We have good-calibre people out there. We will continue to find good-calibre Northerners who are lawyers, who are interested in doing this work. So we don’t want to take that opportunity away as well.
In closing, we feel this motion is bad and we will be voting against it. Thank you, Madam Chair.