Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Standing Committee on Finance asked for some sort of authority for the Premier to discipline the Members of the Cabinet and for the government to come forward with Bill 28. This one here gives the authority to the Premier to revoke the appointment of a person under section 1. That was for disciplinary action.

Now the report of the Standing Committee on Legislation goes further than that, where it's given direction to the government to draft a further amendment that would enable the Premier to appoint Members of the Assembly. I have a difficult time with that and I don't think the Members here had time to talk about it. I didn't know this bill was going to...This wasn't in the document. I just received it today, this motion. It was never explained to me by any Member of the Standing Committee on Legislation that this motion was in place. If I had known that, I would have put some thought into it. However, that didn't happen and so it is causing me some problems with trying to support this bill, even though it came from the Standing Committee on Finance regarding disciplinary actions.

I have some problems with that. If it was clear-cut and went back to the committee, we would have further time to deal with this, but it seems the majority here just want to rush through it. What I see in future years, through the Deficit Elimination Act that we have agreed on, is that it will give direction to the next government and the Minister of Finance. Now we're giving a lot of authority to the Premier to dismiss Cabinet Members. There is also direction for further amendments to be drafted so the Premier will be able to appoint Members.

It's going to change the whole way this Legislative Assembly works, especially the Cabinet, the next time around and I don't know if I want to go that far. We've talked about it, yes; we've talked about this possibility, and the direction that was suggested from SCOF was to give a little more authority to the Premier so that if the Premier has problems with future Cabinet Members, there is a way to deal with that. That was as far as we could go, but now we're piecemealing it. We're dealing with an amendment here that would dismiss Executive Council Members and then we're looking to another amendment down the line to give authority to the Premier to hire these people.

So we're firing these people before we hire them.

---Laughter

I don't know. I don't see the logic of it. If we're going to do it together, then we should take it back to the committee and do it right the first time. Thank you.