Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I appreciate Member Moses for bringing this forward. Committee had a long and heartening look at this particular motion for a number of different reasons. First and foremost, I think we have to thank the Department of Justice for listening to the Members last year, recognizing that the average wait time to seek legal aid was rather high in a lot of our communities. Some of those wait times were somewhere in the 90 to 120 days in some cases, which in Members’ views was a bit of a long period of time, especially to get access to legal advice. It’s probably imminent that they need to get things looked at.

The premise behind this motion is really to set a target rather than a dollar figure. We want the department to come up with what is a reasonable investment, so that target is really the focus of the motion. Bringing that average wait time to about 45 days for seeking legal aid, we think this is a very doable target with a very little amount of investment, yet this will definitely help greatly the Northwest Territories residents seeking that much needed advice. So the $200,000 is imbedded within the motion, but quite frankly, we suggest and encourage the department to use the 45 days as more the governance in doing so. Thank you, Madam Chair.