Thank you, colleagues, very much. Mr. Speaker, this is a systemic problem and I know that you can't solve huge problems overnight. But, we should at least make some start on this because it is very often women who end up working for all kinds of social causes, either in the private sector, in the public sector and even for non-government agencies. I know it's too late to help my wife and her colleague, Joyce Williams, who will also retire from the Abe Miller Centre this month. These are both professionally-trained people and I know that both Joyce and my wife would echo the sentiments I am giving you today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is International Women's Day. For 32 years, Mr. Speaker, my wife, Della, and I have been residents of the Northwest Territories. We were married on August 3, 1963, one month before we went to Baffin Island.

It wasn't until I married, Mr. Speaker, that I fully realized what civilization really meant. I suspected that many women belonged to a different culture, to the jock male culture that I was most familiar with. In my young bachelor days, Mr. Speaker, I never seemed to have a home, it was more like camping. My wife, Della, changed all that. Order was brought to my life and a sense of purpose. It struck me in the early years of my marriage that women were really the architects of our civilization, and it made me approach my understanding of history in a completely different way. They provide the basis for settlement and stability, they're the strongest voices in our society against injustice, abuse and intolerance.

Mr. Speaker, as we celebrate International Women's Day, all I feel I can do is talk about my personal experience living in harmony with a clever, talented, hard-working, strong woman. This month, my wife, Della, will retire after spending the past 18 years at the Abe Miller Centre. The work was demanding, the wages modest, but for so many working for non-government agencies, it has been a battle to obtain sufficient funds to keep this vital social service alive. It's a different world to the public service where you don't have to do fund raising to help cover the costs of wages and programs.

Through her, although I'm a person elected to serve, I've learned the true value of community service. She has served without complaint, without expectation of recognition or reward. In thanking her today, I thank all women who are really the true architects of our communities and our civilization.

If the government wants to do one thing to recognize women, it would be to address the obvious inadequacies in the wages many women receive for the often demanding work they take on. It's a systemic problem, Mr. Speaker, which perhaps can't be solved overnight.

I would like to seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There's always a debate as to how much the state should be responsible for various social programs, either in terms of causing them within our society or fixing them after they've been committed. Is this one more example of the federal government off-loading programs that they are instrumental in initiating, but then walking away from them once the big public demand is there?

That's good news, Mr. Speaker, that this issue is under review. I would like to ask the Minister whether a decision will be made during the time we will be sitting in this session of our Legislature.

Just over three years ago, Mr. Speaker, everybody in this House was delighted to hear that we were going to look at victims of crime and not spend all our time looking at offenders and the offences. So, would the Minister confirm that we are back where we started, just dealing with offenders and we're no longer concerned with the victims of crime?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the Minister of Justice whether he will confirm that four victims' services programs in Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Yellowknife and Fort Smith will be receiving no funding in this coming fiscal year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I find it strange that CBC has been running clips from the proceedings of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline inquiry from the mid-1970s. Call it their 20th anniversary if you want, but there must be a better reason for reminding us of the inquiry than just plain nostalgia.

Is there concern that we have another boom that is proceeding too rapidly? Is there concern that development is proceeding unchecked and with too little concern for impact on people and on the environment? This can hardly be the case, Mr. Speaker, since there are intensive negotiations and consultation taking place between mining people and the various aboriginal organizations and governments. The difference between now and the 1970s is that development is not the huge media event in the way that it was then. This causes the media some concerns and frustration and some nostalgia for the days when the north was in the news almost every day.

A gas or oil pipeline was viewed as a threat to the huge Mackenzie River valley. It's difficult to generate similar anxieties about mining. We've had mines for more than 50 years. Today it's not pipelines that seem to be causing anxiety, but mining roads that seem to be provoking debate. I find it very difficult, however deeply I think about it, to compare roads and pipelines. Hopefully CBC is only innocently marking an anniversary.

I would like to point out, Mr. Speaker, that media circus like the one we had in the 1970s is enough of a show for one man's lifetime. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Very often we blame judges. You know, judges are terrible people who make bad decisions, and so on, which the public can't understand, but all judges really do is interpret the laws that politicians pass in their Legislatures across this country. Sometimes we create a law which may be open to several interpretations and it is then up to judges to decide what is the real intent. So we can't just simply blame the clever people in the Supreme Court of Canada because they have come up with a decision. It is something that they do as a matter of duty, they put a lot of thought into it and they look at the law that they are asked to interpret. So I also commend Mr. Rock, who is a politician, who can see this problem and is going to fix it.

The bigger problem though, Mr. Speaker, is the problem within our society and how we do not take responsibility. It is the height of immaturity to say that I did not know what I was doing. It wasn't me; it was that other person who becomes somebody else once he's done this or done that. I have heard this so many times in my life where somebody has asked me, what did I do last night? Explain to me what happened. I find that very difficult to understand. I was there. The other person was there. He seemed quite conscious about all the things that he was doing and yet, for some reason, he believes that there were two people in the room, him and this other guy who somehow he doesn't identify with. I just can't understand that and I've heard it so many times.

It's nothing to do with relationships to women or relationships to children. It is to do with the fact that individuals won't take responsibility for their actions. I have heard it so many times now that I find it probably one of the endemic problems in our society, that individuals always want to blame somebody else, blame this, blame that and don't take responsibility themselves for their own actions. We are sovereign.

When you look at a bottle and it's a bottle of alcohol -- I have mentioned this before; I remember Ted Trindell saying this in Simpson years ago -- if you check the fingerprints on that bottle that someone is getting drunk out of, the only set of fingerprints are going to be those of the guy who is drinking it. That's whose fingerprints are on the bottle. Don't blame somebody else. You had the choice, and you did it. I believe that if we can't get to some stage where we don't accept that individuals have individual responsibility for their actions, then no amount of laws or everything else is going to make any difference. It is individual responsibility that matters more than anything else, and that is where we have to start. Thank you.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I walked to work this morning with a young man who I have known since he was 15 years old. He is now 32 and his name is Ronnie Hauck. He's a person with very special abilities and special challenges. A few years ago, the Abe Miller Centre assisted him in setting up a courier service out of the centre. About a year ago, I asked Mr. Todd to assist in helping Ronnie to set himself up as an independent courier service. He learned quite a bit about Ronnie and he was very impressed with his achievements.

I'm happy to say that on April 1st of this year, Ronnie will achieve the independence he's been trying to achieve since he was a teenager. In many ways, Ronnie's success is an example of what we would like to achieve with our entire economy. We are a very small population and we shouldn't depend only on mega projects to be our major economic saviour. In the long run, Mr. Speaker, it will be the hundreds of small businesses that will sustain us because they, themselves, will be sustainable.

This seems like a small issue, Mr. Speaker, but if we are successful in many small projects, the economic impact could be very significant. I would like to make this statement today in the absence of Mr. Todd because I would like to thank him for his attention and assistance in this matter, but do not want to see him blush.

---Laughter

So, perhaps this can be passed on to him. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Speaker's Ruling