Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today on the first official sitting day of the 18th Legislative Assembly, I wanted to take the opportunity to express my sincere thanks to the residents of the Great Slave riding for their support on November 23rd. It’s truly an honour and a privilege to sit here and represent them for my third term in this House and I look forward to working with them and for them over the next four years.
Elections can be quite complicated, quite difficult, and you can’t be successful in an election without an incredible team. I would certainly like to take this opportunity to thank the team who helped me out during the election this year. My friend Sham is from the Great Slave riding, who went door to door with me; my parents, Dick and Loretta Abernethy, who were at the office pretty much every day and my dad went around and checked the signs every morning; my sister, Susan, who went door to door with me on many nights; John Argue, who went door to door with me on many nights; Louise Boettger, who sat in the office in the evenings; Karen Willy, Jackie McKinnon, there were so many I can’t name them all, but mostly I want to thank my wife, who actually went to almost all of the doors with me over the 28-day period and had an opportunity to listen to the residents and she keeps reminding me of what I heard on a regular basis. Thank you all.
I have had an opportunity over the last couple of weeks to sit and talk with all the new Members and we do have an ambitious priorities list, as Mr. Sebert said, but I know, looking around this room, we have a great group of people who are committed to the people of the Northwest Territories and I am incredibly excited by the opportunities that we have in front of us and I am really looking forward to getting down to work for all the residents of the Northwest Territories. It’s going to be a lot of fun; it’s going to be hard; there’s going to be arguments; there’s going to be fights; but we will find a way to move forward. So, thank you all and I look forward to working with you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.