Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just briefly I want to thank the committee on their work and, of course, acknowledge the future work on this particular initiative. That said, under recommendation number 2 I just want to make a quick observation. This is an area I've seen for years, which is an opportunity for the chief electoral officer to engage with others -- other partners. This one specifically notes the NWT Association of Communities. I certainly support that. And I would also say there's a great opportunity to bolster and support the elections office by seeing if we could partner with Indigenous governments. And I want to stress, in both cases I don't believe the elections officer should be controlling their elections in the sense of process wise whereas they can assist them in the organization, the mechanics, the administration, and the CEO of elections could be treated as maybe a deputy officer of those organizations through the support mechanisms and whatnot. It would bring consistency throughout the process. It would strengthen everybody. As a matter of fact, it would probably lead to better training amongst everyone, and sharing resources and talent probably would help our election system at large and maybe even introduce more people to the possibility of a career.

When you have an election, you know, whether it's in a small community through Indigenous governments, I mean, you know, the start -- it's almost as if the system is there but it's such a restarting of the machinery after it had been quiet and parked off to the side for weeks, months, years, and, you know, we could be tapping in -- and, you know, I'll just say, for example, like, you know, you got the Tlicho election and you have the grand chief election, and you still have a chief returning officer and in no way would I imply and suggest we take that role of that officer away. As a matter of fact, we keep them in -- you know, we support them to be who -- the best they can be. But they tap into the machinery of an elections office, whether it's printing ballots, helping coordinate returning folks. Again, partnership is what I'm suggesting, not assume control in any form. This could then lead into municipal elections; again, supporting the main election officer in every municipality who wants to participate and see where it goes. Again, this is a blending -- it's interesting. We have silos of resources, talent, and opportunity. This is a great chance to, you know, bleed the lines a little bit, find ways to work together, amplify success, you know, strengthen weaknesses and, you know, harmonize our systems. It doesn't take away from the uniqueness of anyone because of course the chief electoral officer of, say, like for example the Gwich'in election that just happened recently, they would still, you know, lead their election but they would have the tools and functions and support teams and administrative teams to support them in their duty. So, again, it's a recommendation. It's just something that I think is we need to spend more time about it. We've been talking about it for years. I would go so far as saying I don't know how we do it, but we empower the CEO of Elections NT to make those connections and say, you know, let's have this discussion where we can do this. That's all I have to say at this particular time. But our people are our best resource so why keep them all separated when we could be working together. Thank you.