Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, on this Halloween Day, I would like to revive a dead debate of a previous Assembly and join my colleague from Great Slave, and the former Member for Yellowknife North, in talking about scrapping the time change. Mr. Speaker, we fall back to standard time this weekend on the night of November 1st and November 2nd. And as I do every year, I've been hearing from constituents on this.
Mr. Speaker, when the 19th Assembly studied the possibility, NWT residents overwhelmingly supported the idea. As the Member for Great Slave mentioned in her statement, over 3,500 people participated in the survey, 87 percent of respondents stated that they would like to scrap the change. And, you know, Mr. Speaker, I know that the Premier, when questioned about this, mentioned that it wasn't a priority, but I continue to hear from constituents about it, and I felt the need to raise their voices today.
Mr. Speaker, it was not followed through, primarily -- and, you know, I had a conversation with the Premier offline, and since other neighbouring jurisdictions were not immediately on board, there would be costs and difficulties to go through that route alone. And he shared some information with me on lessons learned from the Yukon, and I think it did give me pause. It's certainly something that doing it alone would be costly and difficult. And we have enough problems coordinating with Alberta as it is, and we don't need to add a time differential to those issues. So I was certainly disappointed personally when I saw the plebiscite results in Alberta that they chose not to scrap the change. But, Mr. Speaker, I also want to communicate a bit of a message of hope.
There's momentum gaining behind this issue. A recent poll shows that a majority of Americans are in favour of scrapping the change. Only 12 percent are interested in keeping it. I heard that a bill was introduced in the American senate to get rid of daylight savings time, and I also understand there's a Private Member's bill being studied in Ottawa to reiterate this interest and reset this debate. And, Mr. Speaker, I just want to take the opportunity to reiterate my support and note that this is something that's important to my constituents. I think it's clear to me that this is something that needs to be done on a national, potentially a pan-national basis just to get everybody in line and that the misalignment is the problem. But I think my constituents, and thousands of Northerners who participated in the survey, would like to see the Premier expressing support for scrapping the change when he has the opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member from Yellowknife Centre.
