Kelvin Ng’s final speech

Kelvin Ng, the MLA for Cambridge Bay and minister of finance, made a heartfelt final speech to MLAs last week.

Ng has announced that he will not be seeking re-election in the Feb. 16 territorial election.

“It seems like not very long ago when I stood in the Northwest Territories legislature to make my first speech, like many of you did not long ago,” Ng said on Dec. 3.

He began his career in politics in 1979 when he ran for a seat on the local settlement council in Cambridge Bay. He was first elected to the territorial legislature in a by-election in 1993.

Ng thanked his colleagues and the many bureaucrats he’s worked with over the years, but he saved his greatest thanks for his wife and four children.

“They have suffered tremendously over the years from my constant absence, being more or less a single-parent family, with little, if any, support from me as a husband or father,” he said. “I apologize to them for that and tell them all that I love them. I will try to make it up to them in the years to come.”