Legislation
The first Legislative Session took place in the basement of the Elks Hall in Yellowknife in the spring of 1954. A total of nine bills were passed, mostly amendments to existing legislation. The second session held in Ottawa saw a total of seventeen bills passed.
The biggest issue dealt with during this session was the question relating sales for Indians and Inuit which had been prohibited under a Northwest Territories law dating back to the Temporary North-West Council. The Prohibition meant that bootlegging was common place as well as consumption of alternate forms of alcohol such as shoe polish, anti freeze and vanilla extract resulting in needless deaths and endemic social issues. After debate the council agreed to change the regulations to allow liquor privileges to be the same for everyone. The federal government however disagreed and vetoed the changes.
Read more about this topic: 2nd Northwest Territories Legislative Council
Famous quotes containing the word legislation:
“Strictly speaking, one cannot legislate love, but what one can do is legislate fairness and justice. If legislation does not prohibit our living side by side, sooner or later your child will fall on the pavement and I’ll be the one to pick her up. Or one of my children will not be able to get into the house and you’ll have to say, “Stop here until your mom comes here.” Legislation affords us the chance to see if we might love each other.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“Statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, much legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres of life.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“No legislation can suppress nature; all life rushes to reproduction; our procreative faculties are matured early, while passion is strong, and judgment and self-restraint weak. We cannot alter this, but we can alter what is conventional. We can refuse to brand an act of nature as a crime, and to impute to vice what is due to ignorance.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)