Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to talk about the upcoming territorial election. It may only be two years away, Mr. Speaker, but more importantly is you can never start thinking ahead too soon.

Mr. Speaker, with only a few days in this sitting left, we have to work as hard as we can to squeeze the issues in. One particular topic I want to highlight today is preferential balloting, Mr. Speaker. Interestingly enough, you know, I would love to ask the Speaker questions on this but, of course, our rules of our House don't allow this. I would grill you, of course, in the most respectful, as you can -- one could only imagine. But for the past three months in advance of the last federal election, different people were chatting, and I heard them, whether it was at Tim Hortons or Starbucks or even Javaroma, you'd hear people asking, you know, why do we vote? So when you hear voter apathy is high and engagement is low, you start to wonder, like, how do we change the system and conversation in getting these types of discussions. And certainly, one of the conversations is preferential balloting.

So my research went so far a few months ago to look into when was the last time the territory -- NWT, that is, had a plebiscite. It was actually back in 1982 and 1992 was the last time the citizens were faced with a question that was paramount to the future of the Northwest Territories, and it was about division, Mr. Speaker. The question is was that the right direction to go and how would it look. At the end of the day, we know how it went.

Mr. Speaker, as a plebiscite at that time, it took three and a half months to organize, so is it wasn't an undertaking that considered itself so impossible. So with approximately 860 days left in this particular mandate -- and some days I think it can't come too soon -- Mr. Speaker, is now a good time to start talking about our voting system to create voter engagement?

Mr. Speaker, I propose, similar to what the Yukon has said in the CBC article the other day, of which I want to say I was really excited to see someone else's thinking similar along the lines, is what if we put a nonbinding question to the people of the North for guidance in asking them would this help engagement; would this create more belief in our system? A preferential balloting system may not be perfect but now we're getting closer to perfect.

Mr. Speaker, again, voting apathy is high, engagement is low, and we can keep trying to shake the box and expect different results, but maybe sometimes we got to start thinking out of the box and finding a different method to engage our citizens to get a better result. At the end of the day, this is a caucus decision and an Assembly decision. There is no one Minister who will take responsibility for this and as such, Mr. Speaker, you're off the hook of questions today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.