Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to recognize those GNWT employees who were recently honoured at a long-service ceremony held here in the great hall. The ceremony was presided over by the Honourable John Pollard, the chairman of the Financial Management Board. It was attended by myself and my colleagues, Mr. Dent, Mr. Whitford, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Zoe.

Mr. Speaker, residents of the Northwest Territories owe a great deal to the dedication, hard work and loyalty those individuals who have served 15, 20 and 25 years and all the people that they represent. They've been part of profound change here in the Northwest Territories. We've evolved from the days when Commissioner Stu Hodgson called all the shots, to today, when we have a fully-elected Legislative Assembly where the Cabinet calls many of the shots.

---Applause

We now have strong aboriginal organizations, strong regions, many claims have been settled and more will be settled on the horizon. We're dealing with self-government issues, we're dealing with treaty rights, and Nunavut will be created in 1999. Those people who have been here for the last 25 years have been part of these tremendous changes, and I would like to name them for the record, Mr. Speaker. Barbara Mills, Bernie Straker, Jean Grimard, Carole Lane, Carolyn McCabe, Mary Beauchamp, Blair Dunbar, Phyllis Sartor, Roland Gosselin and Eric Smith.

Mr. Speaker, today and in the past, civil servants have been criticized by many people in our society. I think the criticism wasn't fair and every day continues to be less fair. We're asking these civil servants to do more and more with less and less. They are under increasing pressure to do the sorts of things we feel are important to serve the people of the Northwest Territories. And any of us who have worked in this

system know how important those dedicated, loyal civil servants are to us.

So, Mr. Speaker, we owe a large debt of gratitude to those professional civil servants who have served us so well. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you. I am a Member of the Management and Services Board, but I thought it was important that we got that on the floor of the House so that all Members and the public are aware of the fact that there are concerns and that we are trying to deal with those concerns. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Line By Line

I apologize to Members. I thought that this particular topic would be outlined. I have some concerns about the Conflict of Interest Commissioner and about what we are going to do as an Assembly to ensure that we don't have the sort of thing that happened to the Premier, where someone

can make a totally unsubstantiated complaint against an MLA at considerable cost to the Legislative Assembly.

Mr. Speaker, one thing that I think perhaps should be in the Legislative Assembly budget book is a page specifically for that particular cost so the public can really see at the end of the day exactly what the cost is. The reason I would like to ask the Speaker is because the Speaker, probably more than any Minister, is the one that would probably have to lead any changes that the Legislative Assembly might want to consider. Are there any thoughts, Mr. Speaker, to put in some parameters under which people can make a complaint? If someone makes, as the last one did, a complaint that the Commissioner finds irresponsible, for instance, could they have to pay for the cost of the inquiry?

I really think that we, as an Assembly, should at least talk about this and discuss it. I am not quite sure exactly what the format would be to discuss it. I think it's important that if we don't deal with this issue, who knows, the next time around there could be a complaint a month against MLAs for any number of reasons. I, for one, support the concept -- if there are legitimate complaints against MLAs, MLAs obviously should be held accountable -- but I don't think that means an open hunting licence on every MLA because someone doesn't like them.

So I wonder if the Speaker has any thoughts or advice to Members on how this issue might be handled?

Mr. Chairman, I wonder if I could get consent to go back to ask just one general question?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have a great number of general comments. I just wanted to talk in a general way about a number of issues that have faced Yellowknife that I and other Yellowknife MLAs have dealt with, with the Minister and the deputy minister. I expressed a number of concerns earlier in this session, back in February, and I want to go on the record that I'm satisfied with the progress we're making on these issues. I have a firm commitment from the Minister that these issues have been resolved so, at this point, Mr. Chairman, I don't have any concerns with the department. I think the department is generally doing a good job in dealing with the concerns that I have, as an MLA. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Instead, Mr. Speaker, they are made to feel that they are somehow the enemy who are being punished because of the actions of

criminals and a small minority of careless and thoughtless gun owners.

Firearms legislation should protect the public. It should not incriminate responsible Canadians for procedural errors or omissions. It should not threaten the economics of sport hunting. It should not threaten the livelihood of subsistence hunters. It should not make more difficult the use of firearms at shooting competitions. Members are aware that our shooters have done very well at international competitions. And fundamentally, it shouldn't threaten the traditional way of aboriginal people. This legislation, if passed, will force police officers or wildlife officers into conflict with our communities. Mr. Speaker, despite the best of intentions, Bill C-68 in the Northwest Territories, and in much of Canada, fails the test. Thank you very much.

---Applause

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to support our colleagues in Ottawa and make a statement about Bill C-68. I want to add a little different perspective than the eloquent statements that we've heard here in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I have the deepest sympathy for victims of suicide, accidents and criminal attacks where guns are misused. Any thinking person with an ounce of compassion would agree that steps must be taken to lessen the awful cost to society of violence and of despair. This bill, in my opinion, will not achieve the noble objectives it sets out to accomplish. It seems to me to be a sincere effort by government to try to alleviate the real fears of many people, especially in big cities close to the United States deluged daily by media saturation of murders and violence.

Unfortunately, there is no magic in life or in politics. Violence is glorified in television and in the movies. The social fabric of the country is undergoing tremendous stress with all the casualties that go with it. Politicians are under tremendous pressure to do something about it. Guns are an easy and sometimes legitimate target on which to focus the anxiety of Canadians increasingly fearful for their safety and for the security of themselves and of their family.

I don't feel that Canada will be a safer place after this bill is passed. The millions of dollars that it will cost could be better spent on victims' programs which, ironically, the federal government is cutting back on as well as on firearms education and safety programs.

There are certainly positive aspects of the bill: criminal activity involving the use of weapons must be punished harshly. Making criminals of law-abiding people who aren't able to comply with the bill works against the philosophy of the bill which is to safeguard the public, not to punish it.

Education is the key to the safe use of firearms and legislation should support the transfer of knowledge and experience from one generation to the next without creating bureaucratic barriers which make that transfer more difficult. Responsible hunters, collectors, competition shooters and outfitters have respect and understand the safe handling of firearms much better than any well-meaning civil servant in Ottawa and should be recognized and utilized fully in the design and implementation of any firearms legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to continue my statement.

Mr. Chairman, I have just a few general comments. This secretariat has a very difficult task. It's an infamous central agency and has to deal with all the very strongly-held beliefs of departments that they know what they're doing, that everything they're doing is very, very important and that the secretariat really shouldn't be questioning what they're doing or how they're doing it. But, there is a real need for a central function and for a group to provide some discipline on spending through government programs.

Although the Standing Committee on Finance has some constructive comments to make about how we feel things can be improved, I want to go on record as saying that I think the chairman of the Financial Management Board and the secretary of the board have done a very good job under difficult circumstances. The examples that we use aren't meant as criticism of them.

On a personal note, having studied this government and Legislative Assembly for many years, I think that this government and Assembly, like previous governments and assemblies, take on very ambitious programs. We try to do a lot of things. I think sometimes we and the public forget that there are only 65,000 people in the Northwest Territories and we really do have a very small government. The sort of things that the Ontario government can do or the BC government can do, the sophisticated programs that they can run, becomes very difficult for us to do. We can't do them all, just because we don't have the numbers.

I think what has happened over the last 15 years, and it's not just this government, but probably with every government, is we've always tried to do too many things. We've loaded down our civil service with too many tasks. When you do that, it is just physically impossible to complete all the tasks. I look at our political structures and compare that to 65,000 people in southern Canada who have a mayor, six alderman, and a small administration. They would elect part of an MP and part of an MLA, and that's it. We have a very, very complex structure to try to manage the affairs of 65,000 people.

There's a lot of pressure on our government to do the things that people see are being done in other jurisdictions. It gets very, very tough. There are some examples given in our committee report of the evaluation initiatives of the department which they weren't able to achieve. The reality is, at the end of the day, with limited resources, we have to decide what we're going to do with them. Sometimes, unfortunately, a decision is made to deal with the issues in the field and not give the resources to the central agency to evaluate what will happen there. It's too bad because, as our report said, many times the evaluation component could probably pay for itself.

The other example was that of the fall budget. I think the original intent, and it was a good one, was there was a very legitimate concern that we were having problems getting our construction done on time. I think the experiment was one that really had to happen because if we hadn't tried it, people would be still asking for it today. It wouldn't have gone away. I can't argue with the original Minister's decision and the Cabinet's decision, because they were getting a lot of criticism, to do something differently.

Two things happened with that approach. One is, unfortunately -- and this is not the fault of the secretariat or the Minister -- there are other reasons why departments were late, so we weren't able to totally achieve the major objective of the split budget. The second, and to me the most important, issue -- and why we in the Standing Committee on Finance think this issue should be looked at again -- is that though you can separate, physically and in time, consideration of a capital budget and O and M budget, the reality is both budgets are inextricably tied. The other reality is, you end up with two full-blown budget debates; one in the fall and one in the winter.

The inordinate and amazing amount of work that goes into preparation of the budget by the civil service is really mind-boggling. What, in fact, happens is that the civil service, for the weeks going into two budget sessions, essentially, is dedicated to just that and they're not free to deal with a lot of issues in the depth they probably should. I definitely think the time has come to weigh the pros and cons of what you achieve with a fall budget and what the de facto results of having a fall budget means, as far as workload. I definitely think, at the very least, it's time to review that to see if the decision that made sense four years ago continues to make sense.

I do want to say that in the next four years, this particular central agency, the Financial Management Board, the Finance Minister and chairman, are going to have an extremely difficult job. What we've seen in our system of government, not just this government but the system of government that has evolved in the territories, is that in our consensus system, the chair of the Financial Management Board doesn't have all of the institutional tools he or she needs to exact discipline on the Cabinet, though I think this Minister has done a very, very good job with the limited tools available to him to keep the Cabinet on the fiscal straight-and-narrow, and to accomplish what he's accomplished. I think he, the secretary, and their staff deserve a lot of credit.

But, I also think, that in the transitional period, I hope the Minister of Finance and chairman of the Financial Management Board will make some recommendations in the transitional document that will be going to the next government as to how the next chair and next Finance Minister will have more mechanisms to ensure that the government is fiscally responsible.

Now I know Mr. Pollard uses his wit, his intelligence and patience to talk Ministers into not spending and every technique known to Finance Ministers to achieve results, but it is very, very difficult. And, again, a reality of our system is that at the end of the day, the Finance Minister is, in many ways, accountable for those decisions because the Finance Minister is responsible for the budget. The same way that we lay a lot of accountability at the feet of the Premier and don't give the Premier all the tools necessary to do the job, that is also true with the Finance Minister.

I would just like to conclude, Mr. Chairman, I think the Finance Minister has done a good job. The recommendations we made were made with a lot of thought, and we hope they are constructive. I hope that the Finance Minister will use the wisdom of his four years of experience to prepare the next Finance Minister for the even more difficult job that it will be a year from now. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some problems with the motion. I remember back to Norman Wells. At that time, Mr. Zoe demanded to have Dogrib interpretation, we didn't have it, and we shut down the House. That precipitated quite a heated debate on how we were going to proceed, how we were going to proceed with French and how we were going to proceed with the aboriginal languages. Out of that, there was a committee formed which I was a Member of. We met with many, many groups across the territories and, at the end of the day, there was quite a bit of support for the symbolic use of all the official languages in the Legislative Assembly.

One thing that many of us -- I think everybody in this room, at one time or another -- whether here or in southern Canada, have probably spoken about is that our Assembly has simultaneous translation in all of the official languages. That is very important. There are those who say that money can be spent elsewhere and there are very good arguments about how the money can be spent. But one of the very significant ways we protect the official languages is through the use of them in the House of Assembly.

I think it is something that has been commented on by commentators, politicians, and observers across the country and around the world, that we have more official languages here than they do in the United Nations. I think it's something everyone here can be proud of. Though I understand what Mr. Patterson is trying to achieve, I can't support the motion. I just want to make it very clear that I stand by the original decision that every official language will be represented in this Legislative Assembly. Thank you, very much.

---Applause