Thank you, Madam Chair. First off, I just want to say that I was very honoured to be on this tour with committee, and the hard work that the Social Programs committee put forth and the staff that travelled with us, as well, to these communities. They did a really great job, as well as the department staff who came on this tour with us. So it was a lot of hard work and I listened to a lot of community members, educators, as well as youth, which was very unique and I was very glad to hear the students speaking up on such legislation.

I’d like to thank Mr. Dolynny, Mr. Yakeleya and Ms. Bisaro for bringing forward their motions to support federal cyber-bullying as well as getting this

legislation to the point now and the hard work that’s gone into it. I was very honoured and pleased to have that as our first real bill as committee to take on the road and have such a positive outcome. It was tough, listening to some of the stories. It did open up some personal stories from some of the residents and students. It is great that now, as legislators, we can do something to affect the outcome or even detour bullying happening in the communities and schools, and having this in the schools is a good first step. However, taking it bigger into the workforce and into society and how we can make that step work for us and for the residents of the Northwest Territories is our next step after this one.

What we did here was the cyber-bullying… I thought I was up to date on a lot of things that were happening in the cyber world, but some of these youth brought to our attention some websites that are just anonymous and it was just unreal what we heard from some of these students and what was going on in the communities, but that also kind of filtered out into the hallways and playgrounds of the schools.

We heard a lot of great ideas and one thing that was taken into account was lack of counsellors in some of the schools and that does need to be addressed when we put this legislation through. I like the idea that it’s unique in the sense that each authority will work on developing their own safe school policies and when we do put our territorial code of conduct together, it is one that will allow some flexibility with the schools but also be there strong in the sense that we prevent bullying, Madam Chair.

I just want to say thanks to the committee. It was a long process. There was a lot of discussion behind doors leading up to the motion, after the motion, right to the end, and we did our report and brought it back into the House. I thank the Minister and his staff for all the work they’ve done as well.

Not much more to say, Madam Chair. We did introduce the report into the House. We read it last week. I just want to thank committee for all their hard work. Thank you, Madam Chair.