Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a few comments I would like to make. I’d like to, first of all, thank Mr. Bromley and Mr. Nadli for bringing this motion forward and bringing this issue into the public and for us to debate it.

I was also able to attend the hearings in front of the federal standing committee when they were here and it was a fascinating day. We heard from all sides and I was particularly impressed with the Aboriginal governments, who were extremely passionate about their position and about the impact the loss of the regional boards would have on them.

I think that one of the things that struck me the most, and it wasn’t from the Aboriginal governments but was from one of the later presenters, was the point that was made that closing off the regional boards will also close off the regional offices, which have the technical capacity to support the boards. I think that’s going to be a very large loss.

The Land and Water Board staff assist with the Land Use Planning Board staff. The Land Use Planning Board staff assist the Land and Water Board staff. To close one of those offices, the Land and Water Board office, means the technical capacity of that office is lost to the other one.

This motion, as Mr. Moses just said, asks the territorial government to do something that they are already doing and something we have done extremely well, and I have to commend this government for the work they’ve done with Aboriginal governments. We have excellent relationships, I think, with most of the Aboriginal governments within this territory now and that’s because of a great deal of hard work.

This motion asks the Government of the Northwest Territories to work with our regional government partners. If you’re doing it already, why should we not continue on and work with them on something which they think is so terribly important? I do believe that the regional voice will be lost if we lose our regional boards and I think if we have regional offices that will certainly provide both the technical capacity and the opportunity for a regional voice to be heard. Without the regional office, yes, the board will assign three people to act as a board for a hearing, there’s no guarantee that there will be any regional representation on that board.

A board, yes, is supposed to represent all residents of the NWT, but we know full well that that doesn’t always happen. There are issues that are particular to a region that the board members may not be aware of if they’re not part of that particular region.

Those are the most important things for me. I am in support of this motion and I think that it asks GNWT to do work which will only be for the benefit of residents. I think we will have a new Lands department come April 1st , and I think that there’s

an opportunity for the asks in this motion to be combined with the lands offices that are going to be set up, but there needs to be a melding of the two jobs. We can’t just have the Lands department without also considering the work that the regional offices and the regional boards do right now.