Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is an extremely important issue before us that is of great concern to the Members and to all of us, to Cabinet and Members, and staff as well. I think no doubt many staff are out there watching this particular debate wondering what the result of it might be. I came into the Legislature seven years ago, like we all do with the intention of providing the best of service that we can to the people. I think I have found out from personal experience that we all spend an inordinate amount of time on our job. It is certainly not a job where we get a lot of free time for ourselves. Personal relationships are quite often strained because of the time devotion we have to put to it and because of the stresses that we are under sometimes. All I believe with the intent of service for the public.

I certainly can vouch for most Members here that I observe that really and truly have the best in mind for the public. I think we all are working hard to that very end. There are a lot of issues out there, a tremendous amount, Mr. Chairman, and I can certainly relate to that in my own portfolio with the many many areas that we get calls on on a daily basis and that we try to resolve. Can we resolve them all? No and not because we do not want to, but sometimes because we do have to have policies and processes in place and because quite often the issues are because of restrictions that are financial.

These things have a tendency, Mr. Chairman, to become very dominate in all of our lives. In the course of it sometimes mistakes are made. I think that the mistake was made a year and a half ago, out of all innocence of someone having overlooked an issue. From there, it just catapulted on and continued on to where we are today. It has consumed a lot of time, consumed a lot of thought, a lot of thinking and a lot of concern and a lot of money to where we are today.

To me, I think we owe it to the public to move on. I respect the fact that this is an extremely important issue and we need to resolve the process by which we deal with these issues. We need to resolve how we handle issues like termination of senior staff and other staff.

I guess we could all look at this and probably come up with different perspectives as we have done today. The bottom line comes down to saying to ourselves, how do we move forward and move forward with service to the people?

It is my feeling that the Premier has served the Territory extremely well. I think that he devotes an incredible amount of time to his position and an incredible amount of devotion. I do not believe that it would serve the Territory to replace the Premier. The question becomes, what is next? Do we go through this again at some point?

I think that the difficulties in handling this situation have been well put forward and I think it is important for us to say, well, that is understandable. In my opinion it is definitely a situation where we need to address the issue of looking at how we handle certain processes. There is no question about that. Do we take the drastic step of removing the Premier? I cannot support that, Mr. Chairman.

We are not through the whole issue of dealing with outstanding issues in this matter even yet because of the court finding with respect to the Conflict Commissioner. We may find ourselves there with further expenditures. Was that done maliciously? No, it was done with some honourable intentions, however mistakes were made in the process. I think we should all recognize that mistakes are made along the way.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that it is in the best interest of the people of the Northwest Territories to say, let's move on. We have a lot of issues to deal with over the next year. We have all dedicated ourselves to ensure that we work hard and address the issues. There are opportunities there for us, Mr. Chairman, tremendous opportunities, but we need to remain collective in our approach with good cohesion. I do not believe that the replacement of the Premier is going to result in a cohesive House to move forward. I believe that the Premier has the ability to lead us. He is a strong leader, he is a good leader, a person with good intentions and to me he needs to stay in that position.