Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I would also like to thank Mrs. Groenewegen for taking the high road today and tendering her resignation. I think with that action, she has taken full responsibility and demonstrated remorse for her actions.

My reading of the report indicates to me that the committee has heard the evidence, they have weighed that evidence carefully and I think they have made the right recommendations.

We set up a committee because not all of us were prepared to sit through the days of testimony and that is typical of our process here. We establish committees, whether it is the Governance and Economic Development committee or the Social Programs committee, in order to better utilize our time. We then listen to the recommendations that come forward from those committees in this Legislative Assembly and act upon them.

I did not attend all of the hearings. I did attend some. I did not watch all of the proceedings on TV, but I did watch some. From what I saw and heard, I am satisfied that the process was as fair and as reasonable as we could possibly have in this forum.

I think it was essential for the committee to get to the bottom of a matter of trust. I think that, as has been noted by many, there are clearly no winners in this process. I suspect that many of our constituents feel we are all tarnished because of the whole process and the episode that has led to it.

I too would say that the committee had a very difficult job and thank them for the work that they put into it. They were faced many times with lawyers and none of the committee members are lawyers. This was a process that they tried to allow for as fair and open a process as could be reasonably expected here but I think it is important to remember that there are three branches of government.

There is the judiciary, the government and there is the Legislature. As I remember my readings on parliamentary democracies, all three branches are equal. There is not one that is over and above the other.

I note in particular that Members in this branch of government, the Legislature, are not always required to be lawyers. They are in the judiciary. You cannot be a judge without having been a lawyer. There is a different process.

Members of the Legislative Assembly do not sit in judgment in the judiciary. It is quite clear from my reading and understanding of parliamentary democracies that the legal process is kept out of our walls as well. We do stand and judge our own. We stand alone and judge our own. It is not something that we bring the courts into.

I think in watching the proceedings and reading the transcripts and weighing what I have seen in front of us in terms of recommendations, I have to commend the members of the committee for taking on the difficult job. Again, I believe it was absolutely necessary.

When there is an allegation of bias made against somebody who has a considerable amount of power over me, I think it is important for me to know -- and all Members to know -- whether or not that bias is actually there. So we had to get to the bottom of that allegation of bias.

In the process, I think we have found out a lot of things that I was not aware of. I have to say that I was extremely, extremely shocked to find that a government employee would think of picking up the phone to call the Conflict of Interest Commissioner to ask questions about a case that the Conflict of Interest Commissioner was considering. That is terribly wrong. It is absolutely wrong.

I want to know that the Conflict Commissioner will talk to nobody about my personal affairs or any complaint against me until that complaint has been investigated by the Commissioner. There should be no conversation.

In finding out about the conversation between Mr. Bayly and Ms. Roberts, I have immediately lost confidence in both of them. I think that was a significant mistake. It is one that causes me significant concern and I have no faith in either one of them. Without this process, I might not have known that had taken place but that alone is enough to cause me a very big concern. I might have known that there was a conversation. I guess I should restate that but I had no idea what was the substance of that conversation or whether or not there had been, in fact, any discussion of the case. That is the problem, the fact that there appears to have been some discussion of the case, at least in my mind.

I would disagree with those who say that this was a flawed process. I think that the process was necessary. I would disagree that in a democracy, we need unanimous consent to give a committee legitimacy. In our system here, everything sooner or later comes to a vote. We often have committees that are divided in their opinions and will sometimes have minority reports coming forward to this Legislative Assembly and the Assembly itself has to then choose which course of action to take. So unanimity is certainly not something that is always required in a democracy.

In terms of freedom from intimidation, Mr. Chairman, I read the letter that Mr. Ootes was talking about to mean that government staff or government officials should not be talking to other members of staff and trying to colour their testimony. I read it as a means of making sure that there was in fact free speech and that people felt that they were free to talk without fear of reprisal to the committee if they were called. So maybe there is a problem with the interpretation here, that in fact I thought that letter was going a long ways to guarantee that there was some freedom of speech and that we are going to have a transparent and open process.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I may have further comments on each of the recommendations as we get to them, but those are my opening general comments.