Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don't want to take up too much time speaking to this motion, but I think it is important to be clear about what this motion is asking for. This motion, if passed, would allow our government to request the federal government to amend the maximum term of the 17th Legislative Assembly.
Currently, under the NWT Act, four years is the maximum term. In the new legislation passed now and awaiting assent by the Governor General, Bill C-15, all future Legislatures in the NWT would have maximum allowable five-year terms. Again, maximum allowable, I don't think that any jurisdictions where they have maximum allowable actually have more than five-year terms, but they do have the flexibility to go to a maximum of five years. In every jurisdiction in Canada, with the exception of ours here in the NWT, maximum terms are currently five years.
This discussion was precipitated by the convergence of federal, territorial and municipal elections all in October of 2015. There are capacity issues and I think we need to be mindful that the challenges may not look the same in all communities. What might work in Yellowknife or Hay River may not work in some of our small communities.
In fairness to candidates who may want to run at any of these levels, I think it's safe to say that there could be competition for volunteers, nominators, financial contributors, campaign workers, returning office staff, all of the behind the scenes work done at the level of the chief electoral officer position and the elections staff here in Yellowknife.
As a consensus government, candidates running for MLA in a community like Hay River may draw supporters from residents who may be of all political partisan stripes. Could that be compromised by pressure on candidates who are running at the same time as the federal candidates or their supporters to show their loyalties if the mayoral, MLA and Member of Parliament candidates are all campaigning at the same time? In a community like Hay River, at one level you may be working to get a candidate elected to a level of government and your allies or opponents might completely change at a different level. Even in larger communities it's always a challenge to get people to come out, so to speak, for the candidate of their choice. Imagine this if all these elections are occurring this close together.
Some people have suggested that there are synergies that might bode well for voter participation if all the elections were held on the same day, and I've already briefly referred to that, but I think there's already enough potential confusion with overlapping roles, mandates, platforms, without having them all within a two-week period.
Without the changes being proposed by this request, even moving the territorial election to the 19th of October would be outside of the four-year maximum limit as it exists today. In some Canadian jurisdictions there is provision for an automatic trigger to move a provincial election out by a few months if it looks like the election period will overlap with a federal election. This solves the issue without requiring the elected sitting Members to vote on an extension of their own terms if that extension stays within the maximum five-year term. This legislation and regulation is definitely something that could be included in future revisions after the new provisions of Bill C-15 are in effect. That was another suggestion by constituents, is that these trigger regulations that are in other jurisdictions may work well here in the Northwest Territories as well.
Some people have expressed concern about the timing of this motion, citing the lack of time for public consultation, so to be clear, this motion today will not give this Assembly a five-year maximum term. It would merely enable this government to make a request to the federal government to permit our Assembly to bring forth a bill that would need to be debated and passed in this House to allow this Assembly the same provisions of every other jurisdiction in Canada to exceed the four-year term to a maximum of five years if there were compelling reasons to do so and they were duly debated and passed by the majority of Members of this House. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.