Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know I have spoken previously, but thank you for another opportunity to speak on this again. I do believe this is very important. Mr. Chairman, I just want to make it clear that I agree with the concerns raised in this report. I think there is no question that the process on this issue over the last couple of months has raised more questions and issues. I agree that this has to be resolved in some way. I just want to make it clear that my position is that this committee, as proposed, will not be able to get to the truth without a doubt, which is what a Member has said.

I just want to make it clear that it is not because I am not on that committee. I do not think it matters who is on that committee as long as they are Members of this House. It is because there is such a lack of clarity about what it is that this committee is supposed to seek and the procedure that should be used. For example, what is the definition of bias? Is there something that says that if A has one, two, three, that is bias?

I attended all the committee meetings and I was quite surprised at how legalistic this process was, when it is really not a court. As a lawyer, I do not believe that a legal resolution or legal discussion is always the best way to solve things. I believe in the power and the privilege of the political process to resolve most of the issues of the day. Whereas what I watched were Members who had to constantly rely on legal advice.

If there were any parties or witnesses who appeared before it, it would be the same. Inevitably, this will boil down to a legal conclusion, but what is the legal concept of bias that we are giving the power to this committee to determine? Do we have a legal definition for which you could gather enough evidence and at the end you could come to a conclusion because I found A, B, C, D, now we find that there is a bias?

The next concept is what would happen if you do find bias or no bias? The question comes to my mind, that be careful what you are asking for because when you get it, what are you going to do with it? What would you do if the Commissioner was found to be biased, by whatever means you got to it? Do we have a penalty in mind? Are we saying that we are going to remove her from office? Are we going to throw her in jail? I do not know. What if there was no bias? Should the Premier be allowed to take the Deputy Premiership back? I do not know.

There are no set procedures on what it is that we are looking for, what evidence or what sort of conditions have to be met to say that you have found it when you find it. Then how do you reinforce it afterwards?

I am also uncomfortable -- not to mention the fact that I do not believe that you can control the timing of this committee. We have seen cases where in asking for 12 witnesses, most of them would not or could not appear. I think most people that I know are pretty busy for the next two months. It is very predictable that you will not be able to get the people to appear and do the things that you would like them to do or say, or whatever.

Mr. Chairman, I have another point, which is that I do not think it is wise for us to place the Members of this House in a position where the Conflict of Interest Commissioner is our commissioner. She is our advisor. We are her clients. At the same time, we as a Legislature created that office and the Board of Management, on our behalf, appointed her. It will be, in the end, us who will decide what is going to happen. For that reason, I do not think that we should be...

Ms. Lee, could you stick to the scope of that motion? You are wandering off here. Could you deal with the motion? I have another five Members that want to ask questions and this is your second turn. You had a chance to speak earlier. Could you stay within the scope of motion 3?

Mr. Chairman, I do believe I am sticking to the motion, which is to say that the special committee's mandate should be expanded and that they should be given the mandate to consider the allegation and to consider related matters. I am saying that the word "consider" says nothing about what it is that the committee is supposed to do. We are debating a motion that would create a committee without giving specifics as to what they could do.

My point to this very specific motion is that the idea of this committee would not do the job that this Assembly, that this motion thinks that it is going to do, that it is unclear and that, in the best interest of this Assembly and the people, it would be better for us to wait for the report of the Conflict of Interest Commissioner to be filed.

We should step back and revisit. I think the only thing that would remain is any of the legislative or policy questions that may come out of this whole process that should be addressed, because the allegation of bias is withdrawn. It has been completed. It is outlying the overriding considerations which are, in my view, policy and legislative items that we should be dealing with in a separate way.

Last point, Mr. Chairman, if there is a question about the conduct of the Minister in taping private conversations, or of the senior management, I do believe we have other means of dealing with that. We are legislators. Our job is to keep the government accountable and maintain the trust of the people in this government. There are many ways to address that. I do not believe this special committee, as proposed, is one that would be able to do that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do believe that it was important that I make that clear.

I have five more Members who have already asked. I have Mr. Kakfwi, Mr. Miltenberger, Mr. Dent, Mr. Lafferty, and myself. Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think the question is becoming a little clearer and it is simply this: can this committee that is trying to swim in uncharted territories, assure this Legislature, assure the public, assure the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, the Minister who made the original allegation and the staff who may or may not be implicated, and everyone else that may be implicated with all the goings on that have happened to date, can this committee assure everyone involved that it can decisively and clearly conclude its work within a certain time frame and conduct itself decisively with authority and certainty?

I know the response coming through the letter from the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, which some seem to have attached some great importance to try and protect the integrity of, that she wishes it would all go away. She does not want to be party to this special committee. She says right in her letter she does not want to be party to it. Let her do her work. That is what it says. You know if you can say with certainty and you are going to contain the costs, which I do not think that you can.

We have already seen some of the costs that have been demonstrated to date. They are starting to become staggering. You think that you are going to extend the mandate well into October? You cannot say with certainty that you are going to be able to conclude your work. You cannot say with certainty that it is going to be under $1 million. I would suggest that it is probably $2 or $3 million.

You have no process. You are in uncharted territory. My sense is the Assembly itself is split here. There is not going to be a strong mandate for this committee. It is not going to be a warm reception for this committee when it comes back with, again, no recommendations. So is there any confidence that we are going to protect ourselves, protect the integrity of this Assembly, protect those that work for us, the Conflict of Interest Commissioner, the staff that have been assigned to work for this committee? What can you say you are going to do that is going to save and protect the integrity of anybody?

I believe that it is very difficult to assume that you are going to go into uncharted territory and come back with any confidence and say you are going to get a job done. It is not even clear under the motion what job it is you are asking to do. It is full of implications.

In my view, there is no way you can comfortably suggest that you know what your job is and you can do it, that there is a process, that there are rules of engagement, that there are defined costs. There is absolutely nothing.

I cannot support the committee continuing. I appreciate it wants to do a job and the things that it can do. I am just saying that I think that it has gone as far as it can. We have already called this special session of the Legislature specifically to consider the concluding report from this committee. It has been unable to conclude its report. It is unable to meet its original mandate, so you want to get a fresh new revised mandate, extended time, more resources, plus a mandate to save a lot of people's integrity. You have not saved anybody's yet.

So I would say that we should conclude it. We have some conclusions that we have reached. That is that the committee has gone as far as it can. The Conflict of Interest Commissioner has said from the first instance, let me table my report. It is now free for the Speaker to accept and report that. I think tomorrow, all of us will enjoy to see that report and to see what it has.

Any other issues that are outstanding can be raised in this Legislature and other processes are available. Our survival and integrity is certainly not contingent on the continuation of this committee. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Kakfwi. I have Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to point out that if in fact the Member for Hay River South had let the process run its course, the conflict exercise would have been finished months ago.

What in fact has happened is that there has been every legal obstacle and every legal challenge possible to put in the way of the Legislature in terms of resolving what should have been, as everybody thinks it is going to be, a straight-ahead issue. Having pulled that very expensive trigger, knowing full well with the experience the Member has in conflict situations, that it is very expensive. Having pulled the trigger, she backs away from the table, and now we hear the excuse of money for not carrying further to deal with the issues, the very serious issues that have been put before us and that we are now aware of.

It is interesting to hear the Premier ask of the committee things in terms of certainty in terms of budget, in terms of what they want to do. Things he cannot deliver as Premier of this government. We will have a budget and we end up with the biggest supps in legislative history a few weeks later. The Premier asks for absolute certainty, something he cannot provide in his best day, and none of us can.

Mr. Chairman, there are very clearly some moral and ethical issues and questions on the table for this Legislature. It is interesting to hear the debate on the way in which we come up with all sorts of excuses for inactivity to avoid looking at those particular issues.

We want somebody else to come forward, even though we know that issues are there to be dealt with. I have heard it mentioned around this table. We want someone else to come forward from outside this Legislature to lay another complaint so that we can deal with issues we know are there. It makes it seem that we are incapable, as a Legislature, of doing the work that is necessary to deal with issues that we know clearly are there.

Regardless of how the vote goes, we have to live with those results, but it is unfortunate that we want to avoid scrutiny of the activities of some of the Cabinet Members and some of the people involved in this process. The issues need to be dealt with. I would hope that this Legislature would be the body, through a committee, to in fact take care of that very critical business, to get it done. I am confident that we as a committee, if in fact we were given authority to deal with that issue within the time frames -- because the process will be different. There will only be the committee of operation and it will not be a case of everybody being lawyered up anymore. Thank you.

Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am speaking in favour of the motion. I think we were elected to make decisions. I think one of the worst things that you can do as a politician is to waffle and be seen not to be prepared to make a decision. I am afraid that listening to the arguments I have heard here today, we are in danger of doing just that. I think that the public has the right to expect that we are going to make a clear decision to bring this issue to some close.

I am astounded when I hear people say that we can just shove this overboard and forget about it. A public allegation has been made against an officer of this Legislative Assembly, not appointed by the Board of Management, appointed by motion that all of us voted on in this House. A very public allegation of bias has been made against this officer. If we do not pass this motion, it just gets shoved under the carpet again.

There has been another allegation, an allegation that she has been untruthful in reporting a conversation with Mr. Bayly. If she does not get her day in court, that allegation stands. We would not stand for that for a deputy minister in this government, I do not think. I think this government would go to bat for an opportunity to allow that person to have their day in court. If we do not pass this motion, the mandate of the committee is finished and there is nothing that carries on. That is it. It is over.

The Premier has said that we have other processes available. He has not listed one of them. There is no process available. We cannot take it to the Board of Management. They do not have the mandate, and they do not report back publicly in this House so that we get some decision making here that can be seen by the public. It is absolutely unacceptable that we would say that somebody does not deserve to have their day in court.

If we are not going to ask the committee to represent all of us and hear those arguments and make their recommendation back to us, then it is incumbent on us to bring in another motion and say that all 19 of us will sit around in committee of the whole, invite the witnesses in and hear the arguments here. The ultimate decision comes back to us. Can the committee do the job? It is clearly laid out that it is the power and privilege of Members to make decisions of this sort on our own. I think they, as my proxy, as everybody's proxy here, could listen to those arguments and come back and make good recommendations.

One of the highest forums of judicial consideration we have is the jury system. You get a bunch of people together who are ordinary people, not with any legal training -- in fact, they usually exclude people with legal training from juries -- to listen to the arguments and to then, from those arguments, make reasoned and well thought-out recommendations. There is no reason that members of this committee cannot do the same sort of thing. I have every confidence that they can. Their recommendations are still going to come back to this House.

To just not pass this motion would mean that we were abdicating any responsibility then to guarantee that somebody who has been very publicly criticized for being untruthful and for having bias gets no chance to have their day in court. That is absolutely wrong. For a democratic legislature, I would say that it is absolutely wrong.

We had better make sure that we separate the two issues here. The allegation of bias and the allegation that there has been a less than truthful reporting of a conversation is totally separate from the report of the Conflict Commissioner on the conflict issue that was filed by Mr. Rowe. That report, I hope too, will be tabled in this House tomorrow and then will become public so that we will be able to see what the results are. That has nothing to do with the allegations of bias. It is totally separate, but now that those allegations have been made, we owe the Commissioner an opportunity to present her side of the story and then we have to make a decision. Do we have confidence in the Commissioner? If so, we should express that? If we do not have confidence in the Commissioner after hearing both sides of the story, then we also have another decision to make and we should be prepared to make that decision too.

Let us not sit on our hands and say, "Well, we do not want to spend any more money." Let us make sure that we give people due process here, and other than a special committee to do this, which is going to cost us any more than -- in fact, it will probably cost us less than getting a retired judge to look at it. It is a process that we are going to have to do. It does not matter to me if it is a special committee or a committee of the whole that we do it in, but I think we owe it to the public and to the Commissioner to make sure that we hear this argument and know that we can have confidence in that office. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. Lafferty.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Mr. Nitah.

Thank you, Mr. Nitah. To the motion. Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I think that it is fundamental in any democracy that we have an open process that people feel comfortable, knowing they are above board on what is going on, and have faith in our political institutions. However, when we start hearing of allegations made, tape recordings are being conducted by senior officers in this government, the Ministers...we do have a serious allegation.

We cannot allow it to go by without us not having a process to clarify it. I as a Member have second thoughts. I have had private conversations with Ministers in their offices. I have made phone calls to particular Ministers, wondering at the end of that phone call, is it being recorded?

It may be funny to some of the Cabinet Ministers, but when these allegations are made in a public process this committee has gone through, which is now part of a report that is tabled in this Legislature, there are some serious allegations here. For us to think well, it has been done, there has been a withdrawal of a motion in regards to bias and that is the end of it.

This is not the end of it. This is now at the surface. This has come to the public light. We have to deal with it in regard to the seriousness of these allegations. I for one feel that because of these allegations, it makes it that much more for us to get that public confidence back that is out there, knowing that the next time the people from the public come to a government office or talk to a particular Minister or Ministers, they want to know exactly how private is that discussion that is going on between yourself and a Minister? Or yourself and the principle secretary? Is there privacy in your day-to-day dialogue with the government of the day? If it is not, we have to get to the bottom of this. I think for us not to allow this committee to conclude its response with regards to motion 3, we will seriously do injustice to the process that has taken place to date.

This could have been over and done with months ago. All it had to do was for the Conflict of Interest Commissioner to table her report on an allegation by a member of the public regarding a particular Minister.

Yet we find ourselves having to go through this process. Through this process, we have opened up the box and now we are finding there are some serious allegations being made regarding taped telephone conversations. I feel that is serious.

I for one feel that we have to have a thorough review of all information in regard to this case, and also who has been involved and how deep does this practice go in this government. Is it in only one Minister's office? Is it several Ministers? Is it the deputy minister's office that these recordings are going on in? Is it within the whole government that every time you talk to an official within the government, your discussions are being recorded?

These are serious, serious allegations. I think when you hear about Watergate and now the Legislative Gate that we just opened, we have some serious allegations to look at as soon as we can and have something back to the House when we sit in October to deal with the overall question of public confidence in this government.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask for a recorded vote for this motion.

Mr. Chairman, I had questions for the Law Clerk. They were put on hold until everybody made their comments. My question still has merit. I would like the ability to ask the question or get a response from the clerk on that particular question that was already posed.

Mr. Chairman, my question was to the Law Clerk. What happens to the tape now? She indicated that everything else that was public knowledge stays where it is. However, the tape is not public. In withdrawing her application, does the Member also have the privilege of withdrawing the supporting documents and the tape, which is not public yet?

My reason for this question, Mr. Chairman, is I would hate to see us get into a long, legal debate in some court where there is an application to deal with whether or not this tape has to be returned because the application is withdrawn.

Mr. Chairman, does it follow then that whatever cost is associated with the committee dealing with the tape and the contents of the tape, including the legal expenses associated with witnesses to that tape, is all going to be the responsibility of the committee?