Thank you, Mr. Chair. First off, I would like to acknowledge the hard work of my fellow committee members, the Member for Thebacha, the Member for Yellowknife Centre, the Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh, and the Member for Nahendeh. We all worked very hard to come up with this report. I also want to thank the Chief Electoral Officer herself. She provided utmost cooperation to the committee, answered our questions, she appeared at two public hearings. She came up with some very thoughtful, thorough, and comprehensive recommendations for us to consider.
We had three different reports that we looked at and we decided that we would try to take a coordinated approach in responding to over 107 recommendations. Mr. Chair, I also wish to acknowledge and thank members of the public who made submissions. I mentioned how we had two public hearings; one on September 9, 2016, and the other on June 12, 2017. So what I want to leave my colleagues with is that there was a lot of thought and work that went into this report. That's not to say that we don't welcome debate and discussion and questions about it, but I do want to acknowledge the work of my colleagues, the public, and the Chief Electoral Officer in this important report.
The last thing I wish to mention, Mr. Chair, is that there is some urgency to move forward on this because there are a set of specific changes that are recommended to the Elections and Plebiscites Act, and for us to get those changes made in time for the next election, we need to deal with this report as soon as we can. As I understand it, the next steps would be, if these recommendations are accepted through the form of a number of motions, those would form drafting instructions and the board of management would go ahead and start to do that work. In any event, lots of work has gone into this report, and I look forward to debate and discussion about it, around the report today. Thank you, Mr. Chair.