Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, Minister Todd spoke about contracting of former employees and made a seven page statement in that regard. He spoke about the human resource manual, section 003 titled, Ethics Conflict of Interest and Outside Employment, which explains restrictions on senior officers in dealing with the territorial government. The NWT guidelines, Mr. Todd said, and he uses the word guideline, Mr. Speaker, and not the word policy and it is a policy, balances collective and individual rights and interests and takes a pragmatic approach to the issue. Mr. Todd then reasons that the number of former employees are so many it is too difficult to enforce the policy with every employee, police the policy with every contract entered into. He affirms that each contracting authority is responsible to know the rules set out by the guidelines and he uses the word guidelines again, instead of the word policy and it is a policy, and to abide by them. Mr. Todd, in the inquiry, said that he did not know if it was his responsibility to enforce the policy, nor did he know what was being done about enforcement of the policy.

Mr. Todd said yesterday that the employment contract was not violated in the case of Mr. Bailey, but by Mr. Todd's own admission before the Conflict Commissioner, the policy was never applied. The question I have, Mr. Speaker, is, what am I to make of this? It sounds to me like his document yesterday was written by a very good spin doctor for his attempt to clarify befuddled me even more. Thank you.

--Applause