Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I also am in support of this motion. I think it is a motion for a territory whose time has come. It has been mentioned already and it will be mentioned again, but devolution is part of our growing up as a territory and we are growing up. As we grow up, there are things that we need to do to accept the fact that we are growing up, to accept the fact that we are becoming a little more adult. There have been concerns in the past about people who have been making entreaties to Cabinet, to Ministers, to

MLAs. There have been concerns that they may not have been doing them in a truly moral and ethical manner. Whether that’s valid or not I don’t know, but there certainly have been questions that have been raised in the general public about the number of people and/or the type of people and what the representation is of people who are making entreaties to the government.

So I think a lobbyist registry would certainly allow for a clarity of who is lobbying and why they are lobbying, because a registry would lay that out. I think it’s something that we ought to be moving towards.

One of the things that I would hope would be looked at, and that would be defined in the investigation of whether or not a registry would work, is a definition of what a lobbyist is, and Mr. Dolynny referenced some of those. There are certainly enough acts out there already with definitions that we don’t have to do a heck of a lot of work in order to get ourselves to the same point.

I think that it’s going to be a minimal cost. There probably is going to be a little bit of a cost, but I think it’s going to be minimal cost. Mr. Dolynny referenced 800-and-some thousand dollars for the federal government, who is going to have a heck of a lot more people on their registry than we will. So I see that it would be a very minimal cost, and looking at the cost should be part of the investigation that this motion calls for.

One of the things that I do want to state is that the investigation needs to look beyond just establishing a registry. Accountability and transparency are words that we hear quite often these days. In order for us to have transparency in what’s going on in the government, for us to have accountability of Ministers and Members and deputy ministers, I think that point is well taken, there needs to be a reporting mechanism. It’s one thing to have a list of people who are lobbying, it’s another thing to know how often they are lobbying and who they are lobbying, and basically the registry will show what they are lobbying for.

So I certainly hope that that’s going to be part of any investigation and this motion only looks or asks us to look at investigating whether or not a lobbyist registry should go forward because there’s no money involved in this at this point and I think it’s an investigation that could be done relatively easily, relatively quickly and I would hope that certainly the government would act on this and that we would get a report on it long before the end of the 17th Assembly.

So, with that, I am in support of the motion and I encourage my colleagues to support it as well. Thank you.