Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It has become very clear to us that the inflexibility that we currently have to endure places tremendous burdens on any new government which is elected. When we have a fixed term and we have an October or November election, there is no time to put together a budget to present to this House so we can pursue what I consider to be the proper course of having a budget on capital in the fall, and an O & M budget in the winter, so the proper planning can take place. In order to allow this Assembly to phase itself into a proper budget cycle, proper planning and a proper government agenda, we should be given the kind of flexibility that other legislatures have. I realize that our system is quite different from the system that exists in southern Canada, where, at any time, a leader who is unsure or would like to test his mandate, can just ask the Lieutenant Governor to go immediately to the people for a renewed mandate. In our system what I would propose, Mr. Speaker, through this motion, is that instead of having that power in the hands of a leader, we would decide simply by a vote of this Assembly to ask the Commissioner to dissolve us, so we could go to the people. That is really the intent of this motion, Mr. Speaker.
My own preference would be to have a spring election because that makes sense in terms of the new kind of government planning that is in place. We have endured a very difficult year in which we have had to go through several budget processes in order to achieve the objectives of the government. I believe it is one of the reasons why our own government appears to be, from time to time, in disarray. I have thought about this quite a bit. Why is it that we continually wonder what the agenda is, what the program is, and so on. I see the problem as being one of having sufficient flexibility in order to plan the agenda properly, instead of having to start from scratch and build a budget, two of them over a short period of time, which means we have to wait one whole year before the government can really get on track. This frustrated me a lot this past year. For that reason I decided this was the time to make another step in constitutional development, so that we would no longer have to go to Ottawa with our cap in our hand, asking the Minister of Indian Affairs if it is all right to do this or all right to do that. We should have the power ourselves, at least to ask the Commissioner as a federal representative like a Lieutenant Governor to dissolve so we can go to the people. My own personal preference would be to have an earlier election in the spring of 1995 instead of the fall of 1995. If the Members feel that we should just leave it and wait to see what kind of agenda is forthcoming and what kind of programs need to be fully fleshed out and implemented, then it will be up to the House to decide. However, we should have that kind of flexibility, Mr. Speaker.