Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The intent to go through Strength at Two Levels was to bring back to the forum of this House an opportunity for ordinary Members to be able to advise government as to some of their concerns that are put forth in this report; and as a result of the questioning in the House yesterday, it appears that there has been no process to date where ordinary Members of the Legislative Assembly are given opportunity to indicate to government what we think of the report and what we think of some of the direction that this report is recommending. The overall report, we want to stress, is a government document; it was formulated by the government, initiated by the government, and given to the government to look at. Some of the decisions, I believe, they are intending to concur with and find out ways to implement some of the recommendations. The concern that I have heard in respect to Strength at Two Levels is -- when the report was being formulated there was a concern expressed to me a number of times at the lack of consultation in respect to formulating the recommendations of this report.
The Beatty report, the Beatty team, or the team that formulated this report, did not consult enough with the communities or the groups that are being affected by some of the significant recommended changes that are being proposed, and that has been a concern expressed, particularly in areas that affect not only community government but many of the people in the smaller communities that will be proposing changes as a result of this report. There has been basically no opportunity, or very little opportunity, besides the MLAs taking this report back to their communities and seeing ways that they can get this report discussed among the communities, and then coming back to see whether the communities recommend the recommendations. What has happened, Mr. Chairman, is that these recommendations have been looked at, and it appears that there is a reply or a strategy to address these recommendations, and there has been no time that the ordinary Members have been given any type of opportunity to state publicly whether we concur with these recommendations. This has been a concern to many Members in this House.
When this report was tabled in December, there was an understanding and agreement by the government and the ordinary Members that we would retable this report, and as a result of retabling we would formulate discussions on the report and hopefully some type of strategy would be developed. But as it appears, and I want to emphasize that the appearance is the fact that there has been a strategy developed, an implementation being considered for the strategy that has been developed, without consultation from the ordinary Members. I cannot emphasize the concern in respect to this. This government has made a commitment to work with all Members of this House, and it appears that that commitment has been overlooked.
Mr. Chairman, the report in itself -- and that is why we propose to go through the report page by page -- there have been comments in this House, and I refer to some of the replies given to ordinary Members such as myself by the Government Leader, stating that this report has been too technical and that absorbing some of the comments written in the report would be difficult for Members like myself.