Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman,

I MOVE that this committee recommends that Rule 85(2)(c) of the Rules of the Legislative Assembly be amended by deleting "including the office of the Legislative Assembly" after "responsibility of any standing committee."

The motion is in order. To the motion. Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried. Does the committee agree that Committee Report 10-14(4) is concluded?

What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Dent.

Mr. Chairman, I move that we report progress.

The motion to report progress is not debatable. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried. I will rise and report progress.

The House will now come back to order. Item 20, report of the committee of the whole. The honourable Member for Hay River North, Mr. Delorey.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, your committee has been considering Bill 14, Tabled Document 42-14(4), Bill 8, Bill 12, Committee Report 7-14(4), Committee Report 10-14(4) and would like to report progress with 33 motions being adopted, that Tabled Document 42-14(4) and Committee Report 7 and 10 are concluded, and that Bills 14 and 8 are ready for third reading. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of committee of the whole be concurred with.

Thank you, Mr. Delorey. The motion is in order. Do we have a seconder for the motion? The honourable Member for North Slave, Mr. Braden. Did I say North Slave? The honourable Member for Great Slave, Mr. Braden. Sorry about that. It has been a long day. The motion is in order. To the motion. Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.

I have been requested to advise the House that in reviewing the documents that the honourable Member for the Sahtu, Mr. Kakfwi, tabled today, which were recorded as Tabled Document 77-14(4), one of the six documents was listed as anonymous. The rules and precedents do not permit tabling of anonymous documents in the House. Therefore, the document has been removed and is not part of Tabled Document 77-14(4). The rest of the documents are considered tabled.

The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake rises on a point of order, Mr. Roland.

Point of Order

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a point of order respecting Tabled Documents 69, 70 and 71 tabled by Ms. Lee and Tabled Document 78 tabled by the Premier today. The rules state that any Member may provide the House any document which is required to be tabled by statute or which may be in public interest. On review of these documents, I am unable to ascertain how they are in public interest and the Members purporting that the tabled documents must, in my view, Mr. Speaker, must be able to establish in what fashion these documents are in the public interest, as they are certainly not documents which are required to be tabled by an enactment or a statute.

In addition, Mr. Speaker, I have a grave concern that with the tabling of these documents, of whether these are of legally protected or solicitor-client privileged documents. In reviewing these documents, Mr. Speaker, they clearly were prepared to contradict or influence the debate on the report of the Special Committee on Conflict Process. It appears to me that these documents could be detrimental to the interest of the government as a whole.

I am not completely familiar with what type of documents are permitted to be tabled in this House. My concern is that at least three of these documents may be documents resulting from the legal advice obtained or authorized by Cabinet. Are these Cabinet documents? Are they privileged documents? If they are privileged and that solicitor-client privilege has not been waived, are all legal opinions provided to this government on this matter now available to anyone who may request them? Did the Member for Range Lake have the appropriate permission from the clients to release these documents? Were they aware of the potential consequences to this government as a whole?

Mr. Speaker, my point of order is how is the public interest advanced by these documents and whether these types of documents, in these circumstances, are documents which can be properly tabled in this Legislature. Thank you.

Thank you. The honourable Member is raising a point of order under Rule 43, tabling of documents. To the point of order. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I did not initially intend to do this, as I figured after the commotion that we have gone through, it was time to get on with the process. However, it seems that this is continued by actions taken in this House and I cannot agree with this. The Commissioner, the Honourable Glenna Hansen, has been advised by legal counsel for the Conflict of Interest Commissioner. The Speaker has advised all Members of this Assembly that there may be litigation pending or arising out of this matter. The Premier has today, and another Member has yesterday, tabled documents that comment on this process. Has the Premier received advice from his deputy Attorney General as to whether these steps may adversely affect or prejudice this government, which is almost certainly to be party to any litigation? Has the Premier considered in any respect the interest of the government as a whole, rather than simply his own interest or that of his immediate staff?

In addition, this matter is one that we had hoped was concluded by the report of the committee, the motions of the House and the motion in front of it respecting the Premier. It was clear the wish of all concerned, including the public, is that we move forward with the business of government. Why is it that the Premier insists on returning to this issue and relighting the fire of controversy? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. I would just remind Members that the point of order that was raised is about tabled documents and the specificity of it was that in the area, it states "which may be in the public interest," so just confine your debate to that and not go too far away from it. To the point of order. The honourable Member for the Sahtu, Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I had made some comments in July about the concerns I had with the issue at hand. I spoke again as a witness. I spoke also to the report recently and indicated, I believe in Hansard, that my comments were based in part on some of the legal comments and advice I had received. I believe it is in the public interest to share that because my comments, as made in Hansard in the House on the debate, were based on this document that I have now tabled. It is in the public interest to share that, since my comments and my views were based in part on that legal document, the legal comments I tabled today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. To the point of order. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would just like to make a few comments on the point of order raised. Mr. Speaker, the first issue with respect to public interest, I would like to state that in my Reply to Opening Address when I addressed this House, I indicated at the end of my statement that I will be making some documents available on my website. I can advise you, Mr. Speaker, that I have been asked for those copies and it is a promise I made to the public and I wanted to be able to keep that because I do believe there is an interest out there to hear further about what it was I was trying to make under my parliamentary privilege, to speak and opinionate in this House.

The second aspect of public interest is with respect to making available a forum in which people could make their opinions or positions known when it affects them. As a Member of this House, one of the documents that I tabled is from my constituent. When I am asked to do it, I feel that is within my duty to do so.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know exactly what the meaning of the public interest under section 43 of the rules is but I do believe that it is written in very broad terms and that, given the consequences and implications of that report, I believe very much that it is in the interest of the public opinion to make available as much information as possible.

The second item I want to speak to is with respect to solicitor-client privilege, or privileged documents. As I understand it, Mr. Speaker, I do believe that where there is any solicitor-client privilege, it is waived or eliminated whenever the person who is in possession of that document waives that privilege. By virtue of the fact that this came into my possession, it was delivered to me and I was asked to table them by those who are the owner, or who have control of that property, I do believe that waives any kind of solicitor-client privilege that there might have been or any of the privilege that one might want to assert.

A third issue that I want to make, Mr. Speaker, with respect to this point of order, is that Mr. Roland mentioned that we have been advised in this House that there may be litigation. It may be that -- I know that Ministers in this House, when they are asked about questions regarding issues before the court, that we are not to comment on them. As far as I know, Mr. Speaker, there is no legal action. I do not know if that constitutes cases where tables cannot be made available. As far as I know, as of now, there is no such action.

I do not believe that having a legal action in itself constitutes a bar from tabling it. Even if that is the case, there is no legal action happening and I do not believe that should be the cause for barring tabling of documents.

The final point that I want to make is the fact that I think it was made abundantly clear in the way the report was presented, the power and authority under which the committee reported the recommendations was under what is called parliamentary privilege. The biggest element of parliamentary privilege is that the Members here are absolutely, 100 percent totally protected from any adverse consequences that may arise out of any activities in this House. There are no adverse implications here for any Members in this House other than maybe political adverse implications, which is not at question.

I do not think there are any Members here who are going to be adversely impacted in terms of how they could conduct themselves as Members or in terms of their parliamentary privilege here to represent their constituents. I do not see there being any basis for thinking that this was in any way to negatively impact the privilege of the Members. I think that it should be made very clear, Mr. Speaker, whenever there were any objections, either in the process of the committee or during our debate, it was pointed out over and over again that the committee had the power and the privilege, under the parliamentary privilege, to make whatever recommendations or actions or options made known to us.

Mr. Speaker, I do believe that I as a Member have the equal amount of parliamentary privilege. I have the duty and responsibility to represent my constituents as well as the general interest of the public at large. I do believe that, under any test, under any measure, these documents and tabling of these documents for the purpose of making the information available to the general public would pass any kind of test of public interest. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. To the point of order. The honourable Member for Yellowknife South, Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have a couple of points in relation to the point of order that I would like to make quickly, Mr. Speaker. Some of them are technical, a couple of them are technical and some are not. I guess I will start with the ones that are not.

First, right off the bat, Mr. Speaker, I had hoped that we had moved past this and could put this behind us, move forward and carry on with the good work that we have to do as a government before us. I do not think it helps us at all to continue to rehash these arguments now in the media. Apparently, we are not moving as quickly ahead as I had hoped we were.

The second point, Mr. Speaker, is to client-solicitor privilege and whether or not that can in fact be waived. If these were Cabinet documents or legal opinions paid for by Cabinet, I am not certain that it would not have to be Cabinet then that waives that privilege.

Mr. Speaker, in addition, we have all been notified through the Commissioner and through yourself that there may be litigation pending. It is possible that some Members of this House, some members of the committee, the government, maybe the Premier, others could be named in such legal action. It seems to me at this point that it would not be appropriate for us to continue to pile on more documentation at this stage and essentially either aid or hinder the possible cases that may come before us.

As Ms. Lee has indicated, there may be political fallout here but certainly our rights are not being infringed. I have never been assured that if I were named in a lawsuit in this matter that my legal costs would be covered. I am not sure that they would, Mr. Speaker, so I do have some concerns and I am not reassured by Ms. Lee's comments here today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. To the point of order. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, whether or not this is in the public interest is an interesting question. What has been tabled are obviously legal opinions and on the face of them, they appear to have been prepared to provide points for debate opposing the committee report, which has now been adopted by this House. I would have thought that on the adoption of the report, the item is concluded and this is, in effect, an attempt to re-debate an issue that has been decided by the House. I find that a bit troubling. Whether or not it is in the public interest, I would argue that alone would say that it is not.

I also think it is not in the public interest to table documents that may be used in a legal action against the government. I think it is unseemly to be taking that kind of action before we know just what sort of legal action might be faced in this issue. We had been warned that legal action might be forthcoming and I do not believe that it is in the public interest to either aid or hinder a case before we know what is going to wind up before the courts.

I guess, Mr. Speaker, if you do find that these documents were tabled in the public interest, it also opens up an interesting question. Minister Ootes, for example, has been questioned. There have been numerous requests for him to provide a legal opinion that justifies the clawback of IBAs, for instance. We have always been told that those legal opinions are not available for tabling.

Mr. Speaker, if you find that it is in the public interest for this legal opinion to be tabled, then I would argue that you would have to find that it is in the public interest for all of our legal opinions to be tabled when the government has them so that we all have the benefit of that background knowledge. That background knowledge should not be something that is kept only for one or the other side here. If it is truly in the public interest, it has to be in the interest of all of us to see all the legal opinions. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. To the point of order. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the second opportunity. My motive in tabling the document, as I have said, is pretty clear and simple. It is a support document that I referred to in this House that I based my comments on. I felt compelled to share it since it is important for me to show that I take advice and that I always have some basis for the comments I make, either as a Member of the Legislative Assembly or as a Member of the Executive. Since I have made my views known and they were subject to some criticism, I want Members to know and the public to know that they were based in part on legal comments and advice I received, which I simply wished to share. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. To the point of order. The honourable Member for Inuvik Boot Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again in the public interest, I question the fact that we can take public monies to pay for opinions that are for Cabinet and then have them released in his House to potentially be used against us. In fact, we were advised that there may be litigation pending. To still proceed with this makes no sense, as I see it, in the public interest, using public dollars to pay for an opinion, then to table them and for them to possibly be used in lawsuits against this government.

I would like to know, did the Premier have advice on this before he proceeded with this? Did the deputy attorney general give advice in this matter as to whether this was appropriate or not? Again, in the public interest, we are expending public dollars to pay for the opinions that were received and now tabled in this House.

Mr. Speaker, we went through a process and most Members had the opportunity when they were speaking to the committee motion, and in the House, the report, and the motions/recommendations, all Members had an opportunity at that time to do so and they did so and quite strongly, I might add. In fact, at that time, they had an opportunity to move forward with those documents.

Why at this late date and why in this manner, especially when we were all advised of the possible pending litigation out there? It does not make sense that we would be using public dollars to possibly be used against our own government. I think this needs to be reviewed and these documents, I believe, should be pulled. Thank you.