Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I take absolutely no pleasure in this particular situation, or matter. It is an issue that has to be addressed, but I do not think any of us are going to come out of this with a bounce in our step, or we should not, or feeling good about this. I would just like to briefly clarify what I see as the role as I have come to understand it of this Assembly, in us as MLAs.
Our role is to accept or to reject the report in the findings and the recommendations of the Commissioner. It is our legislation. The Commissioner is the person we appointed, for better or worse, she is an officer of the House. We are not here to redo, or attempt to redo the work of the inquiry, nor are we in a position or do we have the time, from what I understand, are the tens of thousands of pages of transcripts and evidence and such, to be able to do that, in fact, in an effective way.
Like Mr. Dent said, we have to finish this debate, accept the report and move on. We have a lot of work to do before us on other issues in a very short period of time, all of which has a direct impact on our constituents. We have after today, I think five sitting days left of this 13th Assembly. This is an issue that is not to be diminished, but we also have to put it into perspective of the need of government to continue to deliver the services and programs to the people we represent. We cannot continue in gridlock or paralysis at the highest levels. We have to be able to move ahead on all the issues that we have laid out before us to complete before our terms are up.
The Commissioner laid out her findings of conflict very clearly and everybody, I assume, has read them, as I have read the report. She also clearly laid out what she sees as the preferred consequence. That is her comment that in other jurisdictions, Ministers would no longer have their portfolio, based on the findings she has presented to us.
Mr. Morin, in my opinion, did the right thing. He resigned as Premier to allow the government to continue to allow this process to move ahead and out of respect for the office, and respect, I believe, for the need to maintain the integrity of the office. The question has been posed, is there a bias? There well may be, depending on how you read this. I do not see myself in a position to determine that. Once again, I see that as a legal question. As I indicated, we do not have the time for me to decide if there is bias. To sit and review the vast amounts of transcripts, is a physical impossibility, nor do I think it is our position to do that. Mr. Morin has paid a price. There are some other issues laid out in this report that are noteworthy. Very clearly, according to the commissioner, there are some administrative and bureaucratic issues at the highest levels.
The one issue which struck my eye was the veracity of information of briefing notes. we all know in this House, know how heavily we depend on information provided to us by staff. The implication in the report is that Ministers in this House stood up on the basis of information provided to them and made statements. In actual fact, the information given to them may not have been entirely accurate or factual.
To me, this is an incredibly serious issue and is one of the cornerstones that our government is built on, the relationship between the politicians and the bureaucracy and the trust factors. Can we take everything in the report as gospel? That is yet to be determined. Which is why I concur with the idea of striking a working group of senior civil servants to review this particular report and some of the serious issues raised in here. What I have to point out, again, that the committee's work will not be seen as credible and its work will not be accepted, if it is not overseen by an independent third party of stellar qualifications and integrity. Very clearly, we cannot expect the senior civil servants, some of whom whose actions may have been called into question by this report, to take the hard look, or be seen to take the hard look at the processes and departments that they run, to come back with possibly critical recommendations. I would encourage the Cabinet to proceed with this but make sure that we do it in such a way that it is accepted.
I would hope that, at the end of the day, when people have spoken their piece and voted on these motions, we can move on. It is important that we conclude this report. Once this report is concluded, there may be other issues arising out of this report. My own position, at this point, is that I am prepared to debate that, should the need arise. I am not looking for, and nor do I think the territories as a whole, would benefit from further human political sacrifice on what some people may think are capital offenses outlined in this report.
I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate. We have to take the steps necessary, but I would like to just close in commenting and making clear that the former Premier, Mr. Morin, resigned prior to this report coming to this House and being tabled. I think that is how it worked, prior to us, at least, being able to debate this. That does not detract, in my opinion, from what I read into the commissioner's report, in terms of what she saw as a consequence. I do not think we should and nor do I think we can hang a person twice.
This has been a very tough issue, it is a long year to the people involved, that I know. I can relate to that from my own experience of being involved in a court case. The vast majority of northerners want to see this issue dealt with so we can move on. I hope that by the end of Monday, we will be taking the steps necessary to do just that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.