Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I would like to make a statement regarding the deaths of Leonard Bernard and John Gardebois. Mr. Speaker, 15 years ago an inquest ruled that the death of John Gardebois was due to a massive cerebral hemorrhage caused by forceful contact of the head with a blunt object, and that Leonard Bernard came to his death by accidental drowning. A later inquest ruled the deaths accidental.

Controversy and unanswered questions have plagued this case from the beginning. At the time of their deaths there was much media coverage and public concern about whether the arguments and fighting leading up to the deaths of Bernard and Gardebois had any relation to their discussion regarding the Mackenzie pipeline. Then it was discovered that the doctor who had performed the initial autopsies of the bodies was, in fact, not a doctor at all. Also, the circumstances surrounding the men's deaths were never made very clear.

So, 15 years later the families of these men and the nearby communities are still left with many unanswered questions. This and the desire to clear her brother's name prompted Bernard's sister to request that the bodies of her brother and Mr. Gardebois be exhumed and a second round of autopsies performed. A bogus doctor had not properly performed the autopsies. It was discovered in Bernard's case that the bogus doctor had mistaken a skull's normal joint for a fracture. The new autopsies revealed that neither man had received injuries that could account for their deaths, and the pathologist was forced to list the cause of death for the two as undetermined. Clearly the exhumation of the bodies raised more questions than it answered.

Apparently when the doctor who performed the first autopsies was unmasked as a phoney, one year after he performed the initial autopsies, the chief coroner at the time held a meeting with the RCMP and a lawyer from the Indian Brotherhood. They determined amongst themselves that the bodies need not be exhumed for another autopsy.