Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we are dealing with a very serious subject here today. It is unfortunate but it is in front of us and we have to deal with it.
I would like to congratulate the Minister for taking the high road and resigning her portfolio. Like all the other Members, I feel that is a sign that she is taking ownership of mistakes that she has made.
In my mind, the gravest mistake is putting this government in question. In the political climate of the Northwest Territories, where you have our Francophone communities questioning the legitimacy of this government, where we have aboriginal groups negotiating self-government agreements, we do not need distractions of this nature.
We are in the process, a bigger process, I believe, in the Northwest Territories where we are designing, very slowly, a system of governance that is acceptable to all people, trying to respect democracy in the areas of individual rights versus collective rights of aboriginal people.
In my travels with committee work and during personal time, 90 percent of the discussions that I had with individuals, Northerners from all over the North, were dealing with the conflict of interest process, the recordings of conversations over the phone. People had lost confidence in this government.
We started a process that we voted on and we gave the committee a mandate in the return of this report called confidence in the integrity and standard of government. It must have been a very difficult job for the committee and for Mr. Bell as Chair. I congratulate them on the work they have done.
I am of the same mind as Mr. McLeod when it comes to recommendations dealing with staff of a Member, even if it is the Premier. A Member should be given and accorded the right to deal with his or her staff the way he or she feels because of the public nature of this area. The people of the Northwest Territories, through their Members of the Legislative Assembly, will let the Premier know if they have confidence in him, based on his actions from this report.
On conflict of interest, Mr. Chairman, I will quote a good friend of mine, Mr. Doug Cardinal from the Hay River Reserve. He says, "In the Northwest Territories, we have come up with a term -- conflict of interest. We are still trying to define what it is." Maybe we did that to a certain degree through this process but we do have a report and one area of the report, I believe one of the recommendations should be eliminated based on the resignation of Mrs. Groenewegen.
The other areas I will have to speak to when we get to the recommendations.
In the area of the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, it is a very difficult position to be in, I believe, where you are asked to give conflict avoidance advice on one hand. On the other hand, if it gets to an area of complaint, all ties are severed and that Conflict of Interest Commissioner who has given you advice on how to avoid it has to investigate you. I am not sure if that is the right role of a Conflict of Interest Commissioner. Those are some of the questions that we should be asking and answering.
It is not easy for anybody in here but I believe the confidence and integrity of this government was restored a little bit today and only time will heal all wounds, no matter what we do from here. With that, Mr. Chairman, thank you.