Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I keep reading this motion and I do not think anyone could really be opposed to the motion the way it is written. I do believe that we as a Legislature as well as the Premier's office have a lot of rebuilding to do to gain the confidence of the public. I believe I would support this motion because I believe there is a role for the Premier to play in doing what has to be done to restore the confidence of the public and enable us to move forward and deal with the issues that are important to the public.
I have to agree with Mr. Braden in that I believe -- before I go to that, I want to say, with respect to this issue, I listened to the testimonials of all of the witnesses very carefully and I thought it would have been helpful if we could have had testimonies from other people that were in the room at the same time.
In listening to the testimonials, I could not figure out why -- I mean, there was a lot of confusion about where this telephone conversation took place, who was there, who was doing what, who was sitting where and so on. I guess I have to leave it to the circumstance where there are meetings held around this room all the time on a number of issues and it would be hard for anyone to really remember exactly what happened at what meeting and who was doing what.
Regardless, I know that I have had the occasion to talk to the parties involved. I know that Mr. Bayly -- I am really hesitant to mention names here because I feel very uncomfortable in doing that but I know that he came to this office with an impeccable reputation and he is held in high regard throughout the North and within the bar that he has served for many, many years. I know that he acknowledges that this was a failure in his judgment and it happened in the circumstances where a lot of things were happening at once.
I think that the Premier understands the seriousness of this conduct and I have to state that I am very disappointed at the circumstances under which this taping of a conversation took place, and having a conversation without informing the other party there were other people in the room listening to the conversation. I think this is a very serious matter and I have to agree with the motion in asking the Premier to take actions as he sees fit.
I do believe we have to be careful when we make judgments on the conduct of our staff. Every one of us has our own political staff. They are only answerable to us and I do not think that it is our mandate to go and say exactly what needs to be done. I appreciate that there is a suggestion made here in paragraph 8.22 as to what the committee recommends to happen. I believe it is the Premier's prerogative to address that issue.
There were a couple of other things I wanted to comment about on this. It has to do with the process. Earlier I mentioned that the committee had stated that it saw its mandate as being accountable, open and transparent in its process, as well as doing its part in making the government accountable and making sure that it is open and transparent.
I am uncomfortable with the fact that while the witnesses whose positions were in jeopardy by virtue of being called into process, for example, the Minister and the Commissioner were allowed to have legal counsel, all the other parties were not. As we know, the reporter Lee Selleck chose not to appear and he is not under the same kind of jeopardy as is being suggested of others, so there is a sense of unfairness in that the application for standing by these witnesses were dealt with in a private meeting and it was not open to the public and we have no idea why they were not afforded the opportunity to have counsel with them. As well, if it was the decision of the committee that it felt that it was appropriate for the reasons of timeliness or not having too many lawyers or whatever, if that was the case, then I think that their evidence cannot be used to the extent that it has been in this report.
I find it curious that the testimony of Ms. Sorensen and Mr. Bayly and I believe Mrs. Groenewegen are more similar than the testimony of April Taylor. I have listened to this case and I believe she stated that she was in a room that was different than what the rest of the people stated. The committee chose to decide that her testimonial was more credible. I just find it questionable that when you hear four people and there are more similarities between the testimony of three people and yet the committee felt compelled to accept the other person's.
It was really a judgment call and there are serious allegations of -- there are implications that some of these witnesses were not being honest in these discussions, that they were intentionally being selective about the documents being presented, that somehow these witnesses had political motive. I just thought that when I was watching Mr. Bayly's testimonial, he was very frank about what he knew, what he remembered and what he did not remember.
Ms. Sorensen had as much lapse of memory as everyone else who was trying to recall what it was that happened in that meeting. Having listened to all of the testimonials and watched the video and taped the video -- I still have it if anybody wants to watch it -- and reading the finding of the fact, I have a problem in how the committee comes to the conclusion that it does. I just want to make note of that and say that I will be supporting this motion in so far as I recognize and I agree that steps have to be taken to restore the confidence of the public so that this government can move forward and attend to the people's business. Thank you.