Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today, I wish to plagiarize a Member's statement brought forward by my predecessor, Cory Vanthuyne, Member for Yellowknife North. I think many of us are aware that the only thing to get done in this House is persistence, persistence through Assemblies. The idea and the topic of my Member's statement today is a Yellowknife city charter.

This request has been made by the City of Yellowknife in response to frustration from getting traction out of the GNWT. For as long as the property and assessment and taxation act has existed, municipalities have been asking for it to be amended. The City of Yellowknife has asked for the land within their municipal boundaries to be transferred because they have found the process through the Department of Lands to be burdensome and frustrating. They asked for about a decade to get a hotel tax, something that was fought tooth and nail by the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs.

A Yellowknife city charter begins to address these issues. I think we all recognize that Yellowknife is in a different situation from many of our communities, and should not fall under the same legislation. I believe the reason this issue gets no traction is because there's a consistent hesitation to giving Yellowknife more in this Assembly, which I do believe is a healthy check on power. Governments tend to centralize over time. However, blind, anti-Yellowknife sentiment can cause bad policy.

In this case, we have seen the City of Yellowknife frustrated with where its mandate begins and where the GNWT ends. We have seen this in issues such as homelessness. We have seen this in issues of control of lands. A Yellowknife city charter would allow the City of Yellowknife, which is in a unique position, representing approximately half of our territory, to begin negotiations with Municipal and Community Affairs of where those jurisdictions lie, where there are needs in the city of Yellowknife that simply don't make sense in other communities, and then it would allow time in our departments to stop micro-managing the city of Yellowknife and allow what is a much more flexible government to accomplish the task it needs to do.

Today, I will have questions for the Minister of Municipal and Community Affairs about whether we can begin the work on a Yellowknife city charter. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.