Thank you, Mr. Chair. In the last government, we did see a lot of conflict. I wouldn't call a lot of it constructive conflict. It was just conflict, and it had negative implications. So the best way to deal with that is to -- is preemptively and avoid conflict where possible. You know, we do have a number of returning Members now. We have more capacity, I think, going into this government than we did in the last. We only had one returning Minister and a couple returning MLAs in Cabinet. And so I think there was a -- there could have been more mentorship had we had more experience in Cabinet. So I think mentorship of Ministers is a very important aspect of helping them avoid conflict and deal with conflict if it arises. I think that we also need to acknowledge the role of the Regular Members committee. It was called AOC in the last government. You know, that committee also needs to ensure their Members are getting along to the greatest extent possible. And so there needs to be rational voices in there. We also need to work with the Speaker. What happens on the floor of this House, it can sometimes lead to conflicts outside of this House. You know, I've had good exchanges back and forth as a regular Member with Ministers, and we're still friends afterwards. That's not always the case. And so if we're in this House and there are comments that are out of order and the reason certain things have been ruled out of order is because they create conflict, they create negative feelings, we need the Speaker to deal with those. And I have full confidence that that's going to happen. So I think there are, you know, a number of ways to help build our relationships, and some of those have been discussed. Regular meetings between the Regular Members and Cabinet and dealing with things early on as well. If there is a conflict that arises, we can't just let it go and go and go until it's boiling over. We need to deal with it. And it's not always fun, but it's -- you know, these jobs aren't always fun either, and so it's incumbent upon us to deal with things as they arise and not let them fester. Thank you.
R.J. Simpson on Questions by Members
On December 7th, 2023. See this statement in context.
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