Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I would like to speak to the principle of Bill 33, An Act to Amend the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act, No. 3; to this point here: "The Executive Council shall be composed of persons appointed by the Commissioner on the recommendation of the Premier."

Mr. Speaker, I want to speak against this bill. I don't support it. Originally, we asked the government to develop a bill, Bill 28, which was a bill to provide that the Commissioner, on the advice of the Premier, may revoke the appointment of a Member of the Executive Council. When the Standing Committee on Legislation reviewed this bill, they recommended to the government to develop Bill 33. Originally, I supported Bill 28 because, through the life of this Assembly, I see that there is a need for a little more authority to be given to the Premier in the discipline of Members of the Executive Council. But as it went one step further in giving the authority to the Premier to appoint Members of the Executive Council, I have to take a stand against it.

The reason for that is that I believe in consensus government, as an aboriginal person, as a Dene person, as a former chief in a small community. That's the way we conduct our business in the communities, and it has worked for centuries. Many years before this government came here, we had a form of consensus government. As a chief, you don't go around selecting your own councillors. The people select councillors to sit with you to direct the business of your nation, to conduct the business of your tribe. The previous aboriginal MLAs that sat here before us tried to incorporate that into this Assembly. That's why they call it consensus government.

We go around the world and in southern Canada, and we say that we have a unique form of government and it works. We have been saying that to people as we travel. It does work. In southern Canada and in different parts of the world, people have travelled to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association meetings. We express these things to them. By changing Bill 33, I think it's going to really change it; it's going to be a big, fundamental change to the way this consensus government will work. The authority will be placed on one person in this Assembly, and that's going to be the Premier. The Premier is going to have the authority to hire and fire the different Members on the Executive Council, and that will take away from the form of consensus government. That's the way I see it.

You can play with the English language by saying it's going to be team politics and so forth, but, fundamentally, we're here to represent people. As a Member of the Legislative Assembly, if we pass Bill 33, we're giving some of our power and authority away to a Premier. The power and authority you have is to vote for who you think will be a good Minister, and you're letting more of your authority go.

The fundamental philosophy that I have is that I'm totally against this one here, especially at the end of our term. We should leave it up to the next Assembly to talk about. It's publicly discussed quite a bit, and whoever gets into the next Assembly should decide how they want it to be governed. What we're doing is setting up the law for the people who will come after us here.

The selection of the Premier; I don't have very much support for any type of party politics. I've travelled in southern Canada and I've seen how things work. Here, we don't have to toe the party line. We've seen what happened to Warren Allmand the other day when he took a position against the Liberal Party. He got booted out as chairman of a very powerful committee in Ottawa. That's what party politics boils down to. That's the ultimate end in party politics. You tow the line or you get kicked out of responsible positions.

Here, people in communities select us. We're here, we represent them the best we can and nobody is telling us how to do it. But with party politics that will change. For example, if the Premier were a strong Liberal person, who would this Premier select? Is he going to select strong Liberal-type people from the east and the west? How is it going to eventually happen? We're talking about this session and maybe into the future.

This is what I'm concerned about, that we're setting a precedent here that we say is not a step towards party politics, but it could be that way. Even now, people are talking about party politics for the next election. This is a topic that has been discussed in public, there's nothing wrong with that; it's a free country and people can talk about whatever they want. But here, we have a unique form of government. By passing Bill 33, I think it will change fundamentally the way we do the consensus government here. Mahsi.