Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I think this is probably the most difficult thing that I have had to deal with since becoming an MLA. One of my problems, which I have had to wrestle with since this report came out is the fact that this report is still going up for judicial review. My legal training tells me that this House should not be sitting here reviewing the report and its recommendations until that judicial review has been completed. That judicial review, that report, should be able to stand on its own two feet.
The credibility of the work that was done and in the manner it was done. Mr. Chairman, the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council Act says that Section 82.(4), that the Conflict of Interest Commissioner shall conduct an inquiry in accordance with the principles of natural justice. Mr. Chairman, I do not think that anybody in this room is in a position to judge whether this report was done in accordance with the principles of natural justice. We have heard many times here that we do not have the time to review all the transcripts and all the documents that were submitted. We do not. Most of the people here do not have the legal background either to decide, even if they were able to read all those documents and listen to all the testimony, the rest of that. Most of us here do not have the legal background to judge if this inquiry was done in accordance with the principles of natural justice, because most of us do not know the rules of natural justice.
Mr. Chairman, several years ago, I passed my bar exams and I was accepted as a lawyer. Today, I do not remember the rules of natural justice. I do not know how anybody else here, who are not lawyers, could do that. Mr. Chairman, the reason I am saying this report should be able to stand on its own, that the inquiry should be able to stand on its own, is because I know that two of the reasons that will be used to try to keep this report and the inquiry out of the judicial review, is first of all, parliamentary privilege. There will be an argument that because we have parliamentary privilege in this House and that because we established the commission of inquiry, that our parliamentary privilege should extend to the commissioned inquiry and its report, which is total hogwash. Does anyone in this House want to be judged by someone and that someone not be able to be judged on doing the inquiry properly? As I have heard earlier today, I do not think so. Our very Act says, it should be done in accordance with the rules of natural justice. To me, that infers that we want someone to be able to judge whether this inquiry was done properly.
Mr. Chairman, the second thing that will be used is that they will say it is a moot point now because the Legislative Assembly has already dealt with it. The Members, with all their legal training, have gone over the report, and poured over all those millions of pages and documents of testimony. They have dealt with it. Because of that, Mr. Chairman, I have had a very difficult time dealing with this. I have heard both sides say, let us be fair. Okay, if we are going to be fair, then the judicial review should have a fair chance to be reviewed by an impartial person, an impartial judge and we should be willing to waive parliamentary privilege, if it is found, we should be willing to waive that and also to waive the fact that just because we deal with it here, that it is not a moot point.
I know we passed the motion that we are going to deal with it, so we have to deal with it. All we can deal with is what we have in the report. Having said that, Mr. Chairman, whether or not there is bias found in this report, when I look at the Commissioner's recommendations it seems to me all she had asked for is that the Premier step down from his position on Cabinet. He did that. She could have recommended that he be removed from his seat. She could have recommended that he be suspended. She did not do either of those. We have heard several Members say that having stepped down so quickly was the honourable thing and it helped this government. I believe that is true. I also believe, and it is the Dene way, that when a person is punished once, you do not step on him when he is down. What I am saying here, is that I believe Mr. Morin's resignation is enough punishment and humiliation for the contents of this report.
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Rabesca spoke the other day, also Mr. Kakfwi. They had indicated Mr. Morin provided us with some leadership, good leadership, during some very trying times. I believe that is true as well. I thank them for bringing it up because it indicates to me this House is trying to be fair.
Mr. Chairman, whether or not this report and the commission of inquiry is found to be biased or not, I think we need to learn from this process on some of the things that have been identified. One of the first things, and some of the other Members referred to it, was the other day there was an interview on CBC with a professor of ethics. He is an expert on conflict of interest, public law and ethical politics at York University in Toronto. What he indicated is that you do not only have to be impartial, but there has to be the appearance of impartiality and that many politicians do not understand the concept of conflict of interest. I think that is very true. I think a lot of us probably do not understand as much as we should and we had better find out.
The other thing we have to do, and it has already been put in the works, is we need to review the conflict of interest legislation. We have to review, we need someone to review, this report and the issues that have been raised in here, including policies and procedures. For these two things, I think we need an independent party to head the process. That is the only way it is going to receive the proper respect it deserves. It has also been raised by Members here that we also need to find ways for the public to be part of and to feel they are part of our processes. I agree with that.
Mr. Chairman, another thing Professor Green had indicated in his interview is that conflict of interest commissioners should be retired judges because they have had years of experience looking at evidence, assessing that evidence and writing reports. Mr. Chairman, I also agree with this. I think we should heed the professor's advice.
I have also heard other people say, and I believe it is true, that it is time to move on. We have a lot of issues facing us. We still have to conclude division and the creation of two new territories. We know we are behind our schedule already. We need to work on that. We need to work on self-government. The aboriginal summit has said they are not going to work on the Western Territory's future government constitution unless there is significant progress made on self-government. They expect and want those self-government negotiations to be concluded by, not this coming election, but the next one in 2004, or whichever year it is.
Mr. Chairman, we also have to work on devolution of our resources. We need to ensure that our people benefit from our diamonds, our oil and gas and our other natural resources. At this time, we are not able to ensure that we properly benefit from things like oil and gas and from those diamond mines that are just now opening. We need to ensure that our people get full employment, training and jobs through those projects, as well as others. We also need to improve our social programs in the area of health and social services. We need to raise our education levels, we need to decrease our pupil/teacher ratio and improve housing conditions. Of course, Mr. Chairman, we all know that we have a scarcity of dollars and every time we bring this up, people say, where is the money going to come from and where are you going to remove it from? We have to work on those.
Mr. Chairman, in conclusion, I believe that the former Premier has suffered enough, that we should not try to extract any further punishments from him and I also believe that if there is a judicial review and the judicial review process proceeds that we should try to ensure that the Conflict of Interest Inquiry and its report should be able to stand on its own two feet and it should not expect to try to hide behind parliamentary privilege or the question of mootness by our dealing with this report. Thank you.
--Applause