You have been my friend for a long time too, Dennis. John Ningark is my best friend, though.

---Laughter

Mr. Speaker, the other area that I want to cover is the area of the media.

---Applause

I have been wanting to comment on some of the issues which confront the people of Fort Smith. I know this is taking quite a lot of time, but I want to make sure that matters were explicitly and accurately described in the Hansard. I find this is necessary, Mr. Speaker, because we, as Members, cannot count on the media to do an adequate job to report the business that takes place in this House. That is really unfortunate. Mr. Speaker, this House has completed an unprecedented amount of work and I have statistics about that that I will talk about later in my reply. We have also doubt with some issues of serious concern, not only at the territorial level, but at the national level as well. Yet, the level of responsibility shown by the media is disappointing. I will give you an example. This House passed a motion condemning the federal government, the Government of Canada, for its funding cut backs. This is a significant motion. In any other jurisdiction, if a provincial government condemns the federal government, it makes front-page headlines, but here, the broadcast media are so busy digging into the financial matters of MLAs, or making ill-informed, poorly researched comments about House procedures, or making foolish sounding raven noises over the radio, the important news items are going right over their heads. The worst part of it, Mr. Speaker, is that they are not even getting the facts correct, when they launch their self-serving personal attacks. In that respect, I would like to take this opportunity and refer to a matter that arose earlier in this session, and I did not respond to it deliberately because I thought "That is okay, there will be a time and a place in my reply to deal with it."

There was an article in the Friday, February 26 edition of the Yellowknifer -- and I really have to laugh when I think about it -- which contained comments that are misleading and inaccurate. Specifically, I refer to the article on page three. It was right after the Prime Minister of Canada quit, their headline read, "Locals Mostly Happy About PM's Resignation", people in Yellowknife were happy Brian Mulroney was going. That article included the following quotation, "With Mulroney gone, Bush gone, Getty gone and Jeannie going, there is hope for the country yet," said one disgruntled coffee drinker at the Diner. The newspaper even added brackets to the quotation to make it clear that the statement was intended to refer to me and to my constituency of Thebacha. They took special effort in ensuring that the quotation attracted maximum attention by including it in a box column on the front page of the newspaper under the quote of the day. Mr. Speaker, by associating my name with that of the three politicians who have recently resigned, and by stating that I was going, was giving an impression that was intentionally created, that I was planning to resign, and nothing could have been further from the truth.

---Applause

I want to ensure the Members of this House and the people of my constituency that I will continue to represent them in this House actively and to the best of my ability.

---Applause

I am commenting on this today, Mr. Speaker, because I believe it is important to clarify this to anyone who is surprised by the innuendo in this article. I also raise it, Mr. Speaker, because once again I was appalled by the actions of the news media, the news media organizations in Yellowknife. No one from News/North contacted me to see if there was any truth to their secret source comment before inferring that I would resign. Clearly, the decisions to include this quotation from an unidentified individual, to print it without additional facts or confirmation and then to draw attention to it on the front page, reflects the worst kind of unbalanced and unprofessional reporting. Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Press, and I had a copy of it, publishes a manual which includes guidelines for this sort of style and principle which should be followed by journalists. I am going to make sure they get a copy of it. In fact I was thinking, now that it is new year and we have a new budget, I might even buy them a new book and send it to them, out of my constituency funding.

While these are not binding, most responsible reports and editors try to follow them. The style book refers to the following principles as goals to which all journalists should aspire. I will name some of those principles.

"Full investigation, before transmitting any story or identify any individual in a story, where there is the slightest reason of doubt, they should do a full investigation. Citation of competent authorities and sources as to the origin of information open to question.

Impartiality in consideration of all news affecting parties or matters in controversy with equal representation in the report to the sides at issue, and limitation of the subject matter to facts." Facts.

Mr. Speaker, sometimes I do not believe that the media follows these principles. There is one more principle.

"Prompt and frank admission of error with corrections equal in prominence to the error." Sadly, I have no hope that the Yellowknifer would recognize that this kind of unbalanced reporting misleads the public and causes confusion. Instead, they would probably come back with a litany of excuses about the fact that it was a quote, not an editorial comment, or that it was intended as a tongue-in-cheek article. The crux of the matter is that what they did was wrong. They contributed to the fabrication of an untrue rumour that I intended to resign and that is not acceptable journalism. It is unfortunate, Mr. Speaker, when Members of the House are forced to repeatedly take time away from the business of this House to correct and clarify false unbiased references made against them in the Yellowknife media.

However, in this instance, I did not allow my constituents to be left out of any confusion about whether I will be continuing to represent them in this Assembly. To my constituents, I would like to make the following statement, that Mr. Mulroney, Mr. Bush and Mr. Getty might be gone, but Jeannie Marie-Jewell is not going anywhere. No, she is coming to report to the Members of this House when session is on.

To the reporters, who did not even put a by-line on this article and to the disgruntled coffee drinker at the Diner, I would like to tell them that if they would like to see Jeannie Marie-Jewell go, there is one way to do it, they are all invited to run against me in Thebacha in 1995.