Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of this motion. I’d like to thank my colleague Mr. Dolynny for the work that he’s done and the passion that he’s brought to this motion on the floor of the House today.
As my colleagues would understand, I’m the chair of the Government Operations committee and the work of the committee is to ensure that there is a level of transparency and accountability on the part of government, and in that same spirit that this motion purports, is that there has to be a system of fairness that things be done in a fair, transparent and also, at the same time, an accountable manner. Such is the mission that we carry in terms of my colleagues that are part of the Government Operations committee.
In some instances, lobbying, what it’s all about is who is the loudest. In the Northwest Territories we try to be respectful, we try to work within the context of culture, cultural differences. At the same time, there’s a lot of western thought in terms of how the economy should work, the values that you bring with it, and sometimes it’s a mixture. At the same time, we stand proudly and we need to be very proud in terms of how we operate uniquely, which is northern and which is respectful. At the same time, we recognize the differences that we have and to try to work with each other. So that’s what we bring forth that’s a fairly common feature within the NWT.
Lobbying, of course, is an effort to try to bring influence to a cause. Of course, within governments there’s a lot of that that happens in terms of lobbying for positions, lobbying for contracts, lobbying for major initiatives and so forth. So that’s what happens. At the same time, there has been, at the federal level, an attempt to try to bring some discipline in terms of what our lobbyists do. At the federal level there has been precedence in terms of ensuring that there’s a system of order in terms of how it can be managed. I think, for the most part, devolution has changed the landscape within the NWT, how we do business, and this motion setting forth a lobbyist registry is timely in that we need to ensure that we do things in a fair, transparent, accountable manner. For those reasons, I stand in support of this motion. Mahsi.