Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to make just a few more comments. First of all, Members of the Cabinet met this morning and had decided on certain points to speak freely as Members of the Legislature and others to look at making decisions collectively as a Cabinet, so the recommendations maybe should be dealt with one by one to allow for that.

I wanted to point out a couple of things which I think are in fact factual errors in the report. One of them is that John Bayly and Lynda Sorensen did not refuse to produce the letter. In fact, Mr. Bayly was never asked. That is a serious factual error contained in the letter that may have lead to some of the conclusions that the Members made.

There is also another error in the report that makes the suggestion that in fact no letter of reprimand may exist. I take that to imply -- inadvertently, perhaps -- that I have misled the committee. I think it was clear from the legal advisors that the letter of reprimand exists. Witnesses acknowledged that they had received it. The legal advice was that it is subject to the access of information and privacy legislation and the laws of this Legislature and that the legal counsel for the government advised the committee of that. Further, Ms. Sorensen said she could not provide for that based on her legal advice.

It should be pointed out to Members as well, because it was not clear then that the letter is not just addressed to Ms. Sorensen, it is also addressed to John Bayly. It was one letter of reprimand that was given for both of them so there was no way that Ms. Sorensen, by herself, even if she had agreed to, could have provided that to the committee. The legal counsel suggested to the committee on that day apparently that there were ways available to the committee through a series of questions that would help ascertain what the nature of the reprimand was. The committee did not choose to explore that.

I think that is important to point out. The gag order -- or the letter, as it should be properly addressed -- of June that suggested that this was a quasi-judicial committee and would conduct itself in a fair and impartial way was a very, very powerful letter. Let me tell you that those of us who are on Cabinet and for senior staff, it was a very, very powerful, threatening letter.

There has been virtually no conversation that I have had with the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development since then without others present. I have left Mr. Handley's office on two occasions because I did not want the perception made by anyone that I was in there having a private conversation with Mr. Handley. That is the extent to which this had impacted us. I have never had a conversation with Ms. Peterson or with Mr. Hamilton except a few weeks ago.

I refused to subject myself, my staff and Ministers to that so we made it absolutely clear that we will not and could not talk to anybody alone, even to make suggestions of any kind. So all my communication and that of our senior staff was done through a lawyer provided by the Department of Justice. Any interference, any suggestions, even the perception that any of us or our staff made that could be perceived by any member of the committee would possibly be seen as an act of contempt by the committee. That is how serious that letter was. Perhaps it was not clear to the authors of that letter but believe me, that was a very, very powerful letter and it has seriously impacted the conduct of everybody.

There is no doubt, and I raised it in the proceedings, there was an allegation from the onset of that committee against myself, my office and my staff. I asked the committee to address it through letters. The committee never addressed that. I raised it in the course of my evidence. To this day, that committee has not responded.

If they were trying to clear a cloud on the office of the Conflict Commissioner, I wish they had also paid attention to the cloud that was cast by a member of that committee on my office well before the evidence was in.

I wanted to raise that. I think it is important. I was advised I have no way to raise a point of order, a quasi-judicial process that is parliamentary in nature. I am not quite sure what it is that we have created. As I say, I am prepared to go through this recommendation by recommendation. I think we should do that and I think we should allow Members to make the comments that they should without threatening one another. That is important. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. I will recognize Mr. Handley, since he has not spoken yet. Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was not going to comment on this. I am not going to comment on each of the recommendations because I was a member of the committee. I have, like other members, thought very deeply about all of the issues, considered all of the information very seriously, and my views are reflected in the recommendations.

This has not been an easy time at all for any of us. I do not think any of us took it lightly. We did put in a lot of hours because of the seriousness of what we were dealing with. Particularly as a Cabinet Minister, I have to say that yes, it did disrupt our activity, our relationships, our ability to do our jobs in other fronts.

When we were first here, we all signed an oath. That to me is probably one of the most, if not the most, important thing that we did here. We signed an oath. It is not something we just hang on the wall and forget about for the next four years. I take it very seriously.

When there is an alleged violation of any part of the oath, then that to me is probably the most serious accusation or allegation that we can possibly face.

The one point I want to make, because it was made by another Member, that somehow this is a waste of our time, a waste of our money. I do not agree with that at all because to me, if we do not maintain the integrity of this House, we do not maintain the standards of government, and I am not just talking about the government in the sense of Cabinet but us as a whole government, as an Assembly. If we do not maintain that, then everything else becomes questionable and that is so basic to our role here that we can never think of that, in my view, as being a waste of time. We must deal with that if there are questions that deal with the integrity and the standard of this government because everything else rests on that.

It is not a waste of money. It is not what people elected us to do though and we all wish that we were not in this kind of situation, that we did not have to deal with these kinds of matters. I am sure the public feel that way as well. We should not be spending time doing this. We should be dealing with the programs, with the needs that people have out there, the things that we were elected to deliver on, not this.

I, like Mr. Delorey, feel that when we do run into these things, then we have to face them head on and we have to deal with them very thoroughly. You cannot push them aside and say we are too busy doing some other programs and we just simply cannot take the time to deal with it and deal with it clearly. It is so fundamental to our whole purpose.

Finally, my last comment is I do not know the importance of whether we are quasi-judicial or not, or exactly what the implications of that are, but all I can say is we did as a committee look at the facts, looked at the facts as thoroughly as we possibly could. All I can say to the other Members who were not part of the committee but have the report is whatever decisions or thoughts you have on the recommendations, look at the facts. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. At this time, I will recognize another Member who has not spoken. Mr. Allen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too am placed to provide some comment to the process. I hold my colleagues in this House to the highest esteem. I think the committee was indentured to take on a very difficult task. The process is never easy. Sometimes, while watching it very closely on TV, it felt like a court case and I felt sorry for the people who were appearing before the committee, also the lawyers who were representing certain clients.

I think the important thing for myself as a Member here is to understand precisely the nature of the allegations and also the outcomes that arise from a long and deliberate discussion over a period of time.

I would like to commend the committee for taking the time. Although it may have sounded short to many of us, it was long, arduous and also very difficult, I am sure, during the deliberations to come to some conclusions and come with the set of recommendations.

As a Member here, I want to say that I encourage us to debate the four recommendations. Actually, I suppose it is now down to three and I will hopefully lend some further comments to those recommendations. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Allen. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to make a couple more comments just to be clear about what I mean by some of the things I have said.

First of all, Mr. Chairman, I need to state that while I did not agree with the extended and expanded mandate, or the need for that at the time that this Assembly made that decision, I respect the fact that by the majority decisions of this House, that the committee had the mandate to deal with what it was tasked to do.

I do not believe that I am suggesting, in any way -- I believe this work got to the point through incremental steps by a number of parties, including the Minister, it got to the point where it had to be addressed. I agree with that.

Secondly, the point that I really want to state again is the concept of abuse of power, because I do not think we could really debate the recommendations we have before us unless we accept the power of this committee to make those recommendations.

I had to, for comfort to myself in my decision-making process, figure out what it was, this parliamentary privilege that this power came from that this committee was exercising because if you read the excerpts from Beauchesne's and so on, this committee had enormous power. This committee had a lot of power. This committee could call anybody, anywhere, at any time, to say anything they wanted to know. It is a very wide power. This comes from the parliamentary privilege.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that there is no power that is absolute. No one has absolute power except for the power of God. I think that the second thing that might come close to absolute power is that of sovereign power, but even the kings and queens did not have absolute power. They were routinely beheaded for whatever decisions they made.

Their power came from the people. Things have to make sense in the end. It has to commonsensical. I know that this committee was tasked to take care of that power on behalf of the people and on behalf of me as a legislator. That committee was my committee. So as far as I can see, this parliamentary privilege that this committee got the power from, this power really originates from the people. This is what I was trying to say. Everything has to be connected somehow. We are not a vessel or a floating power in vacuum. We are connected to the people who gave us parliamentary privilege and from that, this committee got enormous power, almost absolute power to look into this question.

So this is why, for the interest of people and the interest of the public, that we examine in discussing the recommendations whether or not the power used was appropriate and whether or not the power used was fair and whether or not the recommendations are connected and it is inherently, internally rational to what they heard and found.

I could also state, Mr. Chairman, that I in fact spent time listening to hours and hours of hearings. I stayed up to one o'clock in the morning to listen to the hearings and I read submissions by lawyers. I have to say there are a lot of situations that were very, very confusing.

I am not implying in any way that the committee has conducted themselves in a way that treated this lightly but I am saying that this is the court of appeal. This Assembly right now is the court of appeal for this committee that we tasked and the Supreme Court of this decision is the people. So in judging the recommendations of the committee, I need to look at all of the facts and circumstances that the committee used to arrive at their decisions and that it is commonsensical.

I should also state, Mr. Chairman, that I agree with some of the recommendations and not others. So I did not want to go to what my position was on any of those recommendations. I am going to make comments on that as the recommendations are dealt with. I do not think that in any way it should be implied that because you are questioning any part of the process or recommendations, that you are condoning any of the activities that a reasonable person knows to be a wrong conduct.

Mr. Chairman, I want to take this opportunity to state that I had a serious problem with this quasi-judicial process. In watching the process, in watching the television, I was very confused at how the process went from legal to non-legal at a moment's notice. At some points, the opinion was sought to the counsel as to the legal position was in this and that. Other times they would say that this is non-quasi and this is a parliamentary committee and we can do whatever power we want.

I accept that this committee had that sort of power but in the end, it has to be answerable to the people. I found that the rules were made along the way, in some cases. Some people had lawyers and some people did not. Some hearings were held in private and some were not. I find it curious that this committee says that the committee's mandate is accountability, openness and transparency of this government and I think that the same should go to the committee as well.

I also agree that we have to come to some sort of closure on this matter. I agree with a great deal of regrets that we have to talk about this in the way that we do. I am just not comfortable at this point in the way that the recommendations and facts were presented, where some of the facts were mentioned and some others were not. There is some reservation on my part as to whether or not this report will be capable of bringing this matter to closure, that it went further than it had to, I think, in some aspects in finding of fact. I think a lot of recommendations there could have been made day one. I look forward to putting my position on where I stand on all of the recommendations. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I move that we extend sitting hours to conclude Committee Report 6-14(4). Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We have a motion on the floor to extend sitting hours. The motion is non-debatable. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried. We will extend sitting hours to conclude this report. Mr. Bell.

Mr. Chairman, I was prepared to deal with the first motion here, if that is in order.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Is there anybody else who wishes to speak? Mr. Antoine.

Thank you, Mr. Antoine. Any general comments? Mr. Bell.

There is a motion on the floor. The motion on the floor has been circulated. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, in speaking to this motion, I would like to discuss a couple of the points that are within the body of the recommendation. We have heard a lot. The report itself is driven by the need to establish and maintain the highest standards of integrity, of transparency and professional conduct. There are many other ways of describing, keeping the very best of process.

Where the committee states that it finds the actions of Mr. Selleck and his employer, the CBC, amount to a "...clear and deliberate contempt of the committee's authority and proceedings." Yet it essentially tosses them off as a sideline dispute that does not warrant or merit the attention of the House. I guess I find it ironic, Mr. Chairman, that it was almost the same kind of statement in Mrs. Groenewegen's decision to remove her application of bias.

If I have this correct, Mr. Chairman, if I recall that she sort of lifted the official complaints from requiring it to be action, but she said in the body of her letter that she still felt that there was a bias there. I think the committee, where it was assigned to try and sort this out, it has in fact duplicated something that upset the committee in the first place. Here it points out that there is a clear and deliberate contempt and yet it says it is not worth bothering with.

I guess the point in here for me, Mr. Chairman, is that if we have indeed determined that the actions of a reporter and a national broadcaster are in contempt of the standards of performance and professionalism that we want to maintain in this House, then some kind of action, or at least some kind of venue where the CBC could engage, is warranted.

There is a further reference under 8.7 to something about sanctions by this House. The sentence reads, "The consequences of their own actions, meaning CBC and Mr. Selleck, on their reputations may well be much more far-reaching than any specific sanctions of this House."

I am wondering in here if it is the suggestion that if we really do consider this to be their response to the committee's request to appear, if their refusal is indeed a clear and deliberate contempt, do we want to undertake some steps to indicate our displeasure in more concrete terms than simply saying, "We dismiss you guys. You are not worthy of our attention." They are, I believe, worthy of attention.

I do not know, Mr. Chairman, unless the committee -- I would be interested in hearing any other comments to see if anybody else supports me in this, but we are not being true to ourselves and our conviction here if we are going to take this kind of finding, especially on the part of a broadcaster as large and with as much reach as the CBC does to our audience, that we should leave this unsolved or unattended to. There is something unfinished about this recommendation.

I will leave it at that, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Ootes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would also like to comment on this particular area. It likely will be a bit of a repeat of what has been said by other Members. In the report and in the recommendation that deals with CBC and Lee Selleck, and under 8.2, a reference that it is, "...a matter of utmost seriousness." And in 8.3, "The actions of Mr. Selleck are a breach of the well-established constitutional privileges of the Assembly and amount to a clear and deliberate contempt of its authority and proceedings." If the actions of a reporter and of the CBC are to be taken seriously here, I do not see a sanction in here. I do not see an action that is being taken. I am not here to judge Mr. Selleck. I am not here to suggest that he was wrong or he was right. There are press obligations and press rights and I respect that very much.

What my point is, is that I find it rather ironic that we went to such a great extent to put together a committee to look at the conflict of interest complaint by the Member for Hay River and in a part of her letter, she felt that a personal comment that the bias was there, yet here, ironically -- and we proceeded with that -- yet here, Mr. Chairman, ironically, we do not proceed with any sanction, yet we seem to say that Mr. Selleck and the CBC have dealt with a breach of the well-established constitutional privileges of this Assembly.

So while we are prepared to proceed with one of our own Members, we are not prepared to proceed with a member of the media. I guess I wonder why.

To me, it leaves a gap and I just do not completely understand that logic. Perhaps it can be explained. Perhaps there is a rationale behind it, but I will just say that I find it rather ironic that we went to such an extent for one of our own Members and then we failed to pursue sanctions for someone else.

I want to repeat I am not suggesting guilt on Mr. Selleck or the CBC because I was not part of the committee that looked into this. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I do not support this recommendation and this motion largely because it is really not in line with the findings of fact of this committee. Mr. Chairman, I think this goes to the abuse of power that I was talking about. Page 27, where it talks about the conduct of Mr. Selleck and the CBC, right up to page 29, there are a lot of statements made that showed the displeasure of the committee about the conduct of this reporter. I do not have an opinion about the right or wrong about this reporter as stated by previous speakers.

However, for example, looking at paragraph 6.2, it seems obvious to me that there is implied some kind of conduct that this House expects from the media. It has referenced standards and practice of the CBC and it sort of in a blanket states that this was violated some how. He has violated his professional standard. He has damaged his own credibility according to 6.3.

So many words here are so inflammatory and I am very uncomfortable stating all that about someone's work, especially when this person was not able to appear and answer to anything or to explain. Well, he chose not to. There is a statement that the reporter was embarked on a mission of surprise on paragraph 6.2. He refused to acknowledge the compelling nature of the summons, that his testimonial would have been important and instrumental.

This raises one question, which is if his statement was so important and instrumental to this proceeding and he chose not to appear because of whatever reasons, then can we imply that the Commissioner and the Minister have been victims of his improper conduct? If the committee feels so strongly that this person had the crucial information and he chose not to appear and he breached all the standards and he was in contempt of the Assembly and the committee was not able to get the information that it needed, then how was it that he was able to come up with the findings that he has?

I understand that it had to use the information that it was able to gain but if this was that instrumental, does that not leave a question as to what the soundness is of the finding of fact?

Another thing, Mr. Chairman, I find it really ironic that this reporter received a summons and he just simply said, "No way. I am not going to be there." He showed up. He would not swear in. He wanted to know why he had to speak and his lawyer said, "We are going to challenge this." So what did this committee do? Just a slap on the hand and say, "You are bad. You should have come and talked and you did not. We are really mad at you and you are very unprofessional." The committee could just say what other words? This committee is speaking on my behalf and this committee is speaking on behalf of the people out there because remember, that is where they get their power. I think they will have to answer to that.

Another side of this is what I see here is those four people who came and appeared before the committee and said what they needed to say, the Minister, the Commissioner, the civil servants, they came and they spoke and their jobs are on the line. They are going to be fired or have already been.

The reporter says, "I do not know what you are doing and I am not going to appear." Then he gets nothing. So for me, it is as simple as that. I have a concern with this motion in that the text of the findings went so far as to be imputing misconduct on a professional. It questions the integrity of the role and place of journalists in our society. I know that we are not always happy with what is being reported but, my God, I will not see the day when we somehow think that we have the power to judge the conduct of the media because we have this all omnipotent power to judge and then say we are really annoyed with you but we are not going to do anything. That does not make any sense to me whatsoever.

I think that if this committee has the importance and the mandate that it claims to have, then I think that it is irresponsible to say all that it has and to say we are not going to do anything about it because we do not feel like it.

When I first heard about the power of summons, I did not know what that meant because in legal process, if you do not show up when you are summoned, then there is a remedy there. You could be sent to jail or you could be sanctioned by the judge in some other ways or whatever. I do not know what the remedies are available to us but I am sure that the committee would have considered that.

I have grave concerns in many aspects with this motion and I think that it is a very irresponsible motion. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. To the motion. Mr. Bell.

Thank you. I will try to respond to some of the questions on behalf of the committee and I hope that you will forgive me if I do not have some of the intricacies of some of the legal argument down. I will just try to tell you in plain language what our intent was and why we decided what we did.

I think the first point that needs to be made, because Ms. Lee just raised it, is that it should be clear that this committee has no power to sanction Mr. Selleck but the House does. We are free, if we wish, to parade Mr. Selleck out in front of us and discuss a process for sanctioning him. There is nothing stopping us from doing that. That has not been short-circuited. We can still deal with that.

Our committee certainly had concerns with Mr. Selleck and the CBC when they came before us, refused an interview to discuss with our legal counsel the nature of their testimony, but came before us and just waved this flag of journalistic privilege as sort of some blanket protection. They were not interested in the kinds of questions we might ask or where they might be relevant.

They wanted to wave this flag and essentially have us accept that as some sort of privilege that we could not question. Even in court, when the media or journalist have to appear in court, I do not know for sure but I would imagine that they cannot just roll into the court room and say, "Journalistic privilege, we have to leave." I would assume that they have to establish it somehow. The CBC and Mr. Selleck refused to do that in this case.

We thought that it was not worth pursuing after commenting on the actions in the report because it would have dragged this thing on for some time and it would have cost a lot of money. We knew we had to come before this House on October 23rd with our findings. I suppose we could take the CBC to court or we could sanction them here in the House and we could drag this out for a year or so, or maybe longer. I am not sure what that would accomplish but as I have said, this House is certainly free, and Ms. Lee is free to make a motion, if she wishes to do so, that we deal with sanctioning the CBC and Mr. Selleck in some manner. The committee did not think that was prudent, given that we thought we really needed to bring closure to this and this was a peripheral issue, not central to the bias and not central to the conduct of Members and staff. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Dent.