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:
“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)
“Coming out, all the way out, is offered more and more as the political solution to our oppression. The argument goes that, if people could see just how many of us there are, some in very important places, the negative stereotype would vanish overnight. ...It is far more realistic to suppose that, if the tenth of the population that is gay became visible tomorrow, the panic of the majority of people would inspire repressive legislation of a sort that would shock even the pessimists among us.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“The wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)