Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of this motion, as you may have gathered from my statement earlier today. I want to thank both the mover and the seconder, Mr. Bromley and Mr. Nadli, for bringing the motion forward.

I spoke in my statement about inaction, and a fairly long period of inaction in regard to taking action on the issue of NWT residents who have disabilities and closing the gaps and providing services that close the gaps for NWT disabled residents.

I think it's important to note, as Mr. Bromley did, he gave you some statistics, but the impact of a disability in a family or in a community doesn't affect just the disabled person. It affects all those people around them who support them, who are required to support them in one way or another. Caregivers, family members, certainly schools are impacted. It's not just the disabled persons that we have to talk about here. We are not providing the services and the programs that we should to the disabled persons to the detriment of many other people as well.

The council's report, as Mr. Bromley has mentioned, highlights many gaps and many needs in the services that are required across the territory. I think it's an excellent document. I have to confess I haven't read the whole thing, but I've certainly read the summary and I've read part of the full document and it's a well done summary, it's a well done survey, and I don't think anyone can say that it didn't canvass the majority of the NWT, 32 out of 33 communities, and some 320-plus people who were canvassed and responded to the survey. I think it's a very excellent summary of what one could say is the state of the nation, the state of the NWT nation in regard to disabilities and where we sit.

My view at this point is that this summary document, this project document has provided the government with a way forward. It's done a great analysis of where we sit at the moment, and there are five recommendations at the end of the document, five major recommendations which suggest how we can go forward from here. I think this motion asks basically for the same thing. Maybe not specific to recommendations, but we're asking for the government to find out, do an analysis, find out why there's been no action on the Disabilities Action Plan since, basically, 2007, 2008. Why is it not a priority for this government? Why nothing is happening. Why we still have NWT residents who are struggling to live, to work, to get educated, all because they happen to have a disability.

The Minister, earlier, was answering some questions, and he spoke as the Minister of Health and Social Services, but he's also the Minister responsible for Disabilities, and I think we have to recognize as a government that if we have a Minister responsible for Disabilities, then we have to give them the tools to work with. I suggested that this situation now is somewhat like the homelessness situation was previously. We now have a homelessness coordinator who is pulling all departments together and presumably working on programs across all government departments. We need the same thing here with the Disabilities Action Plan.

We have Education, we have Health, we have Housing, to name three major ones. MACA, I'm sure, is involved in there to a certain extent. We need somebody who has the funding but also who has the authority to reach across all departments and to pull them together.

I have to ask these questions, and I think the answers are no, but is there coordination across our government in what we're doing for disabled persons? Is it adequately funded? Are we following the advice of our NGOs, the advice of the people that are working the front-lines that are dealing with persons with disabilities on a day-to-day basis? There are lots of departments involved. Someone has to pull them together and someone has to work with the council, and that's an ask in this particular motion.

Lastly, I think I mentioned, and I hope it was well heard, but in my statement I said we can send a message to the 18^th Assembly. If we speak strongly, if we speak loudly, if we support this motion we can tell the 18^th Assembly this is a priority, and it's a priority not just for the Members of this Assembly but for the territory as a whole. This is something that we need to work on. We've waited some seven or eight years to get some real action going forward. We should start now in 2015 and not put it off until 2016 or 2017. It can be done. As I've said before, let's do it.