Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, for members of the public, dealing with government can be a very frustrating experience. The government is generally designed and operated with a focus on ease of administration rather than end-user experience.

However, Mr. Speaker, no segment of government can compete with the legal system in terms of its opaqueness, inaccessibility, and dizzying complexity, particularly in regards to civil- and family-law matters. While it is convenient to blame everything on Cabinet, I have to admit that the Kafkaesque nature of this system isn't their fault. The system of common law that we adopted has taken hundreds of years to tangle itself into a procedural and administrative equivalent of a pile of wire coat hangers.

My heart always drops when a constituent comes to me for assistance navigating the legal system, especially when children are involved, because I know the uphill battle that they are fighting. I am not even referring to the battle for a resolution to the case. I am talking about the difficulties they will face simply understanding how to make their way through the system.

For example, not long ago, a constituent came to my office because she was told by a court worker that, to begin an action, she needed to file an originating notice. She didn't know what that was and surely didn't know that to find it she had to look in the Judicature Act, then make her way to the rules of the Supreme Court made pursuant to that act, then navigate to part 2, then look in annex B, then find form 4, and then fill it out and hand deliver it to Yellowknife.

In many instances, the only one who can navigate this system are lawyers. If you are unlucky enough to need a lawyer, you could easily rack up a bill in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. However, just finding a lawyer has become a tricky proposition. Today, we have lawyers in Yellowknife and Hay River, but at one time you could also find them in Fort Simpson, Inuvik, and Fort Smith. All across Canada, the days of small-town lawyers are coming to an end and access to justice is diminishing. As the world changes and the situation becomes increasingly dire, the need for government action intensifies.

I will give credit where credit is due. The GNWT offers generous legal-aid coverage in comparison to other jurisdictions, and it funds a spectacular legal-aid outreach clinic. Unfortunately, more is needed. There is no reason that accessing a government service should be so complicated or costly that it is out of the reach of much of the public, especially when it is such a fundamental service.

I will have questions for the Minister of Justice at the appropriate time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.