Thank you, Mr. Chair. I won't reiterate too much of what everybody said. I think we've all heard it so much in this last hour that we need to look at other things.
Being from a small community perspective, like my colleagues Mr. Nadli and Mr. McNeely, drugs have been in the small communities for quite some time. I remember growing up and going to school in Inuvik when there was a lot of cocaine coming down through the Dempster Highway. With the new highway to Tuktoyaktuk, we are going to kind of see some of that, you know. Every time there's an opportunity for a highway or other avenues to travel, all good and all bad will come with it.
Sometimes we focus maybe on one facet of something. There might be, like, seven or eight, you know, as much as a diamond. How many facets in a diamond? We need to look at all of those. As well, you know, I'm looking at this paper here, and we're talking about this bill, and I'm wondering why didn't we talk about all these other bills that are on this brown sheet of paper while we were travelling with this marijuana legislation, as well? Because, you know, everything that happens within that bill will have an effect, you know, social assistance, social services, on health, education, all of those aspects of it. I think we need to look more broadly.
You know, some of the meetings we've had recently, there has been a lot of disagreement. We're not all the same, you know. Everybody has a right to agree or a right to disagree. I think what we need to look at is, okay, a way forward and championing that rather than, "Oh, my God, this is an emergency," knowing this was coming from the federal government. We didn't really have a choice. We had a chance to react, and this is how we're reacting to it? I think we need to take a look around and see how we could make this better as we move ahead.
I think there's a good opportunity for communities to start to look at their bylaws. Some communities do not even have bylaw officers in the community, and some communities have two police officers. You know, we're taking a little bit of burden off the police officers so they can actually do some positive policing in the communities, like going out fishing or hunting, get a softball game, go coach hockey or baseball, whatever it may be. We need to look at those aspects of this and say, "You know what, there are a lot of good things out of this as well as the concerns." Everybody has concerns.
I know I do for my region. I was up in my region recently, and I actually saw some marijuana, you know, delivered in the mail, and this has been going on for some time. It's not a shock. You know what, it's either that or bring it in legally. You know, we look at communities that are going to possibly make a prohibition to not have marijuana in their communities. We need to educate them, as well, to use this as an education tool to educate them that, you know, the black market is still going to be there; it's still going to thrive. Community members will still be paying the high amount that they may pay for marijuana, you know, rather than a community that does not have it.
For the communities that have liquor stores, you know what, I am from a small community. In the past, I remember ordering from, you know, the Inuvik liquor store to get some wine into Paulatuk. It's going to be like that with marijuana, as well, too. It's nothing. Nobody is reinventing the wheel. What people are trying to do is refine it so that it's actually workable, so it has, you know, less impact of harm in the communities.
We did one tour of the communities. You know, we've seen them once, but imagine living there and seeing that on a daily basis, what the impacts are of illegal marijuana. The communities that have totally banned alcohol, it's still there, and, you know, in a sense you hide that aspect of all of the illegal things that are going on. You can either ignore it, or you can say, "Hey, you know, we need to do something about this and educate people the right way."
There is a good opportunity to move forward, the best way forward. Together, whether we agree or all disagree, it's going to move forward just the way it needs to. I believe that, you know, there's a six-month term where it gives the government time to, I wouldn't say make corrections because we don't know what mistakes will be made yet. It will give the government time to take responsibility for the shortfalls.
Actually, some of the people who may fall through the cracks on this, who may rely on it too much, it gives an opportunity to work with them, and I think the government has the best opportunity to do that. The government has a lot of resources that they can fall back on, not like some private entrepreneurs. If we give this to private businesses right away, it may be, in a sense, stepping off, starting off, on the wrong foot, and I think we need to look at that and look at all the implications if we do something like that and what's next. You know, we need to maybe have seven or eight plans, and, you know, maybe this one, maybe the government has already looked through, all the professionals in the departments have looked through all this, and maybe that's the way forward, the best way forward, seeing how it's so rushed. You know, if we say that it's so rushed and we are not ready, do we expect to give an entrepreneur a licence tomorrow, saying, "Hey, we do not know, but go ahead and, you know, see what happens." That is kind of going in off of the deep end. I think we need to tread our way in slowly and work together on this.
You know, I look at social media, see the tweets even about myself, you know, voting on things like that. I'm, like, wow, we need to keep this in a professional manner and work forward together on this, not, you know, take jabs here and there. I think we need to all kind of work together on something like this, because this is something of significance to not just people of Yellowknife but people all over the Northwest Territories.
There are 33 communities in the territories that are looking at this, you know, and some people see it as an opportunity to do something good, and I think we need to, as well. A way forward, I think we're already halfway there right now, tonight, and it gives us time to look at it this summer and go back to our constituencies and how can we help. You know, there are also other governments to consider in the territory. The Government of the Northwest Territories is not the only government in the Northwest Territories. You know, there are a lot of Indigenous governments who take pride in what they do, and there are a lot of economic development arms of those Indigenous governments who could change their policies overnight, unlike the government, where it may take some time, so we need to rely on them, too. So, when we are developing things like this, we need to look at the businesses and the professions who've worked at that for, you know, years and years. We are not the professionals here, but we have a lot of resources that will direct us in the right way to make the best decisions.
That's all I have to say, Mr. Chair. Thank you.