Thank you, Madam Speaker. First and foremost, I appreciate all Members here speaking up and voicing their concerns and their opinions here. This is what our House is about: it's about working and hearing everybody's concerns. I'm going to speak about my concern that I had. I have staff that were from the Department of Lands and ENR that are working lots and lots of overtime. Other departments are in the same boat. When we talk about the safety of our individuals, we had people that were driving to borders, the Alberta border, again working 10, 12 hours, then coming back. I brought it to the Cabinet, and I said, "Look, we need to do something about this." I personally, I can speak for myself, I said, "We need to deal with this. We need to look at how we're going to combat this, how we're going to organize this and how we're going to do it."

Is it perfect? No, but we're working to improve it as each day goes on. We have conversations in Cabinet, we listen to our colleagues from the other side. There are some challenges out there. I'm not going to deny that, but this is the reality. We're in a pandemic, and we need to make some hard decisions. We came up with this secretariat to help residents. We talk about the safety of Northerners. My colleague from Nunakput talks about 3,000 people who died from a pandemic previously. Am I happy with that? No, because that's where my kids' ancestry comes from. I do not want to look at any pandemic that's going to take people's lives away from them.

I struggle; I've been challenged with border control. In Nahendeh riding, we have two gates to stop people from coming in. There are people that bypass that. The Member from Deh Cho talked about people that came and went away. Yes, we hear about it. I deal with it daily. I work with my colleagues to try to get this addressed and try to fix. It is money well spent for people's lives, and that's what we've got to look at. It was a hard decision, lots of struggles for myself. I could probably say for everybody here when they're talking about it. It's about the residents of the Northwest Territories and how we're going to deal with it. I am going to stand up and support this, Madam Speaker. Thank you.