Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the chance to give my views on this. I, too, have spoken on this matter as it has been considered in previous Assemblies and I'm going to remain consistent. I've had the difficult job of being Government Leader and I would like to think that I'm adding that experience to my consideration of this bill.
I want to say that I strongly support the bill. I think if we want to have a strong Premier, a Premier who is a leader, and if we are going to continue to demand accountability of the Premier for the actions and decisions of Cabinet and from Ministers and departments of the government, we must find ways to strengthen the accountability of Ministers to the Premier. We must find a way to ensure that Cabinet Ministers are loyal to the Premier.
Mr. Speaker, it's a tough job and I recall seeing a wonderful cartoon during the life of the 10th Assembly that appeared in News/North. They used to have good cartoonists, then. It showed the Government Leader as a chuck wagon driver. Unfortunately, although the Government Leader had the reins, had a whip and was seated in the driver's seat of the chuck wagon, the horses -- and there were seven horses, each with the name of a Cabinet Minister of the day on their saddles -- were all galloping at full tilt, each one in a different direction.
Mr. Speaker, I think that -- and that was, of course, an extreme illustration -- the problem that we are trying to guard against with this bill is simply that a Minister who is challenged by the Premier for not following government policy, for not being loyal to a Cabinet decision, for undermining a colleague, may say to the Premier and can say to the Premier under the present system: "Well, you are challenging me but I don't have to listen to you; I was put in this job by MLAs and I know who they are, and if you are going to challenge me then I am going to take it to the people who put me here, and your job, Madam Premier, your job, Mr. Premier, is going to be on the line, because I don't owe my job to you. I owe it to the people who supported me in the Caucus." That is the danger, Mr. Speaker, and the weakness in our system.
Now, I would like to say, and I think I agree with the honourable Member for Thebacha, I have grave reservations about the party system and it being applied in the Northwest Territories. I think we already have, with our huge geography, our many languages and cultures, our many geopolitical interests within the Northwest territories, more than enough divisions and reasons for not working together in the territories. I feel that party politics would add to an already complicated political mix in our consensus system. So I don't believe that party politics would help.
I don't agree, however, Mr. Speaker, with the Member when she says, this will take us on the road to party politics. In fact, I agree with Mr. Ballantyne that by putting this extra measure of accountability into the office of the Premier, we will be avoiding that step to party politics. Party politics will guarantee loyalty and discipline of Ministers, and if we don't put this measure in which I think will guarantee that Minister will be loyal to the Premier, then the next alternative is going to be that we will have to create a party system and the party whip will make sure that there's loyalty.
So I see this as a safeguard against party politics rather than taking us inexorably towards party politics, Mr. Speaker. In fact, I want to say that, although I personally think there is a lot of merit in the idea of going further and electing the Premier at large, that procedure certainly will not flow from this bill and should not be confused with this bill. That is another issue and another step, and that might take us perilously close to party politics. This measure need not do so.
Basically, what we are proposing with this bill is something we have considered in Caucus seriously the last two times we have selected a Premier, and that is, we've considered having the Premier select the Cabinet rather than having Members of Caucus select the Cabinet. I know Members like to sometimes have their voice, but I would agree with Mr. Ballantyne: ordinary Members have an awful lot of power in this Assembly, mainly because, Mr. Speaker, there are 15 of us and eight Cabinet Ministers. So, at any time, the ordinary Members can choose to remove a Minister; indeed, the whole Cabinet. They have a lot of power and a lot of ability to demand accountability without insisting that they vote on secret ballot to select Cabinet Ministers.
There is one thing that I would like to point out, Mr. Speaker, and I intend no criticism whatsoever of the current Cabinet, but I do believe that having the Premier select Ministers could ensure a better balance geographically, in terms of gender and those things that are important in a government.
Right now, with Cabinet Ministers being elected by secret ballot, there is nobody really there to ensure that the result is balanced. So, for example, and again I don't intend to criticize the current Cabinet Ministers who are all discharging their responsibilities across the territories, but right now, we have a Cabinet that has three Ministers from one region of the Northwest Territories out of eight, and the largest region in the Northwest Territories doesn't happen to have any representation on Cabinet.
So, Mr. Speaker, I cite this not because it was anyone's strategy or plot but because when you have the present selection of Ministers occurring by secret ballot, it's a bit of a lottery. No one really knows what the outcome is going to be. So one advantage of having the Premier select Cabinet Ministers is that there is, I think, more likelihood that there would be a better balance, geographically and otherwise, within the Cabinet.
So, Mr. Speaker, for those reasons, I am going to vote for team politics. I think that's what we are voting on here, to ensure that there's a team and that the Premier selects that team and that team has loyalty to the Premier. I think that what we are voting for here today; team politics, not party politics. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.