Thank you, Mr. Chairman. To myself, it is not a question of whether I continue to support the Premier or not. I think it is important for me to convey very important messages that I have been receiving from my home riding of Inuvik Twin Lakes.

Mr. Chairman, I too assume moral responsibility as an elected Member to this Assembly, as well I do not put myself above my colleagues in this House who elected me as a Minister. The challenge for me, Mr. Chairman, is the level of advisement we received throughout the process. That concerns me and especially concerns my constituency.

The fact that the money issue raises great concerns, the fact that we put these people ahead of the very small people who are disadvantaged, that concerns me as an Ordinary MLA representing the riding of Inuvik Twin Lakes that has a very high population who still rely on a subsistence economy as well as many who are on income support and in public housing.

I also have the business community that is vibrant that relies on industry which I need to protect as well. The integrity of my riding is important. This issue has raised many concerns throughout and I am saying that we need to look at an ongoing commitment from all of us to help the Northwest Territories prosper in my own riding or their riding.

I feel compelled to respond while I continue to hear that there is a need to protect the integrity of one person who has caused so much grief and so much concern to all of us. It is inordinate for us to defend and continue to defend under our legislation when we know that there was ill-advisement throughout the process. I cannot directly say that I can be accountable because I was never privy to the information until most recently.

My constituents are continuing to raise a very important point to me. I must be honest with them and represent them under my oath of allegiance to this Assembly and I must let them know today through this process that I was not made aware of what had transpired in the period of time we had taken to debate this.

As I said earlier, it is very important, as other Members have, to discuss in this House today what we feel is morally right and morally wrong. I think when the issue comes to severance and whether it was done in accordance with proper policies and procedures, I have been indentured to ensure that we need to make these changes to reflect better government. The accountability aspect I will not speak to too lengthily because personally as I said earlier, I was not privy to a lot of the detail until recently when it was disclosed through the public process.

It harms me as a Member of this Assembly that we continually debate amongst ourselves what is morally right and morally wrong. I think we have spent a lot of time, a lot of effort trying to make things better for our people and yes, we always have shortcomings. We have a poor fiscal position, unfortunately, that we tend not to deal with. We tend to deal with more, to me, issues that would normally... in this case, this report.

I feel that under our mandates we do have to address critical questions and time consumed on this report takes away from our ability to deal with those issues that are very important to our people. I feel somewhat betrayed when we stand in the House or stand up in meetings and pray that we work for those who are underprivileged. I must say as a Member of this Assembly I feel privileged to represent my riding of Inuvik Twin Lakes and also work and represent the people of the Northwest Territories in the small communities of Kakisa, Trout Lake, or in the board room in Ottawa.

That is one privilege we have as elected Members that we can always cherish and will continue to do so. Again, my main concern is putting people, who are in need, at a disadvantage. I want to convey to my fellow colleagues here in this House that is why I assumed this role, it is a challenge.

Hopefully if those Members in the House that feel we need a new leader or we need to continue with our current leader, that is certainly something that I will sit here and evaluate as the debate continues. With that, Mr. Chairman, I thank you.

Next on my list I have Mr. Lafferty.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Chair will recognize Mr. Krutko.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I for one believe that we do have a responsibility to the residents of the Northwest Territories and to the people of the Northwest Territories to offer good governance. Mr. Speaker, we have rules and procedures in regard to acts, legislation, policies that we have developed from time to time. This is the House responsibility of developing laws and directions and programs to be carried out on behalf of the people of the Northwest Territories.

Yet, Mr. Speaker, in this House, no one is above the law. I for one feel that we were misled. We were basically told certain things happened, which after the Auditor General's report clearly stipulates a lot of things that we assumed in the debate that we had in this House did not really happen.

Mr. Chairman, the thing that really gets me in the Auditor General's report is knowing that there were contractual agreements in place at the time of these dismissals, and those contracts were not considered in making the decision to compensate. Instead, as a government, we go out of our way to re-enact or re-establish new contracts that exceed the old contracts to the tune of some $400,000 and some $250,000. Realistically, the old contract only allowed for compensation up to $133,000. Yet we exceed that amount by doubling the compensation that the individual is required.

What really burns me in regard to what happens with this issue is the question of trust. It was clearly stated in this House when we had this debate, the Premier clearly stated that I was not involved in any way in regard to the negotiations of the contracts for the two individuals. But it clearly states from the record when a question was asked by Mr. Dent to Mr. Papineau, "Yes, we did inquire as to the justification to the maximum performance pay, taking into consideration that there were letters of reprimand on file. We were told that they were given direction to pay maximum performance pay. Further clarification was that they had done a great job. But in specific, as to the objectives that they had to meet for doing such a great job, therefore, that was the...(inaudible)...for performance."

But no where were they able to find the evaluation that was done to determine the performance pay-out. There was no evaluation.

I am moving down a little further after a question asked by Mr. Dent. Was there any indication of who provided that direction? Mr. Papineau states: "The Premier provided the direction to Ms. Snider to pay maximum performance pay-out." It is in the Hansard, which clearly states to me that the Premier was directly involved in negotiations of these contracts.

For myself, I did have trust in the Premier, but today, I have lost that trust, knowing that he stood up in this House clearly stating he was not involved in any of these negotiations. Period.

I for one find it awfully hard to sit here going through a process that we went through during the 13th Assembly. At that point, the removal of a Premier will tar every one of us in this House and we, as elected Members to this House, have a responsibility to ensure that good governance and that the rules and regulations and policy that we establish in this House is carried out to its fullest.

Lately, we have seen how Cabinet can reinvent rules to defer or move away from polices. We have heard of pulling out of contract negotiations by deleting policies that allow for economic benefits to the Northwest Territories by way of business incentive policies. We find ways of intervening $30 million contracts without going to public tender by way of negotiated contracts, which it clearly stipulates in the negotiated contract policy, that Members of the Legislative Assembly affected by a contract have to be consulted and given the opportunity to support such an initiative.

These policies are there to ensure that as a government we have communications at all levels, and that to ensure, because of being on Cabinet, that does not give you the right to override policies and procedures that we have in place in this government.

I find it awfully alarming to realize that going through compensation packages that were identified that I agree we should compensate people for contracts we have with them by way of employment contracts. For me, that contract is binding. I agree that we should have paid Ms. Sorensen and Mr. Bayly what they had coming to them, but when we see the amounts that are in the report, which totally excludes contracts that were made by the parties in regard to employment contracts, and practically tear up those contracts, rewrite a new contract to enormous amounts of dollars paid out by way of compensation that was not supposed to be received.

Yet, Mr. Chairman, we have a lot of employees in this government who are shaking their heads today, wondering what do I have to do to get a golden handshake?

This sets a bad, bad precedent. As a government who is responsible for protecting the public purse and ensuring that we have fair agreements for employees, but to go out of our way to basically give lucrative contracts to our personal friends is uncalled for.

I for one fully support the report of the Auditor General and the recommendations as put forth by committee, because for myself, as a Member of this Legislative Assembly, I have been misled in regard to what we were told in this House.

I voted to support the Premier the last round because I was under the understanding that the answers we were receiving by the staff and the Minister of Finance along with the Premier were accurate. What we find through this report and the findings of the Auditor General, we were misled. Using another word, lied to.

I for one would like to state for the record that I am offended to have been taken "to the cleaners" by a process that was one-sided, was not thorough in giving us the answers we were asking for and not giving us information relative to the case in front of us today.

With that, I support the committee report. I support the Auditor General's report and thank her for finally letting us see the light of day as we have been kept in the dark for so long.

Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The Chair would just like to remind Members to refrain from making any allegations. The Chair will recognize Mr. Handley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I am not going to talk about the details of what happened over the last year and who is responsible for what. I do not want to debate the Auditor General's report. I think most people have as much information as they are willing to take in and have come to their conclusions based on that information.

As I sit here listening, the question to me is following through with your motion to ask for the Premier's resignation. What does that do to government?

Like you, I put in three years here, not because I like to fight and argue and make accusations and so on, but because I want to do something. I want to do something for people that we represent. I will tell you that I have done the best I can and I will continue to do the best I can. I am not perfect, as many of you have told me, many many times, I am not perfect by any stretch, but I will tell you, I do everything I can for those people that we represent.

As we sit here today, it is pretty comfortable in here. There are people out there who probably slept last night on a floor or a chesterfield and there are babies that are taken away from their mothers. We become fairly distant from those things and we spend a lot of our time, and some would say waste a lot of our time in here, poking at each other, making accusations. That is not getting us anywhere near to what we said we were going to do when we all campaigned last time and made promises and so on.

People need housing. There are people sleeping in tents. Community infrastructure is falling apart. People need training. They cannot qualify for the jobs that are out there. There are aboriginal leaders who have said, "I don't think this government represents us." Sometimes I have to say that what we do in here probably adds more doubt to that.

There are a lot of important issues in front of us over the next year that we should be focused on. The pipeline is moving ahead. We have diamond mines moving ahead. On the economic side there is a lot of opportunity but we are not spending our time on that.

Devolution and resource revenue sharing has to happen if we are ever going to develop an economy and a political system in the North that recognizes the unique interests of our people. We are spending far too much time on this kind of thing. It is important to be accountable, absolutely. I have no doubt in my mind at all. It is important not to waste money. It is important to make the right decisions and to make them as efficiently and as effectively as possible. That is all of our jobs.

This last year has been hard. We should not have had to spend all this time we have in the last year bickering with each other, the conflict process, with payouts to people, all of that stuff did not have to happen, but it happened because we made it happen.

So where do we go from here? I think we have to look at what our options are. If you really feel that the one option is to have the Premier's head on a platter, and that is going to solve all the problems and we can have a good healthy government for the last year then I suppose we have to go there. I am not sure it is that easy. The immediate thing that goes through my mind is, okay, we do that then who is next?

-- Laughter

We heard a lot said last week. A couple of people were asking for my resignation and I do not take that as a laughing matter, I have to say, I do not. I do not joke about anybody's resignation.

This week we have heard a lot of accusations toward Mr. Steen. I do not take that lightly either. I think we are trying to run a good government but I really do have to ask, who is next then? Do we really have a better government if we do not have Mr. Kakfwi as Premier? Does that somehow straighten out these perceptions of misspending or whatever it is? I am not sure. That is one possibility.

The other one is, well maybe we should have a leadership review of the whole Cabinet, but I immediately dismiss that in my mind because it is too late for that. We should have had that last year. Maybe that is something in the next government we have to do, or whoever is there has to do, because we cannot have this going on all the time, hanging over our heads, while we are trying to do our jobs.

So, it is too late. We cannot back up a year and say let's give ourselves two more years to straighten this out. We only have a year left and I really believe it is too late for a leadership review.

I have to go to the next option in my mind and say, okay, I am not convinced that taking out the Premier is really going to resolve the problems we face. Have we gotten to the point where we are so dysfunctional that maybe we should just dissolve this government and call an election? Is that where we are at? If that is where we are at and you really feel we cannot carry out the mandate that the people gave us, that we have reached this point, then maybe that is the best thing we have to do.

I am certainly not going to make a motion to do that today, but I tell you, that has certainly crossed my mind a lot and I think we should all think seriously about what it is we are doing here.

I will tell you I do not believe that taking out the Premier is going to somehow straighten out all the wrongs in the past and have us have a good, effective government over the year that is left in our mandate.

I really think that if you believe it has gotten this bad then let's make a fresh start. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it feels that we have been here in this situation too many times now. I want to apologize to the committee, I was not able to attend the committee meeting yesterday, I had to attend a community meeting in Fort Providence so I was not able to participate in that discussion with the committee and neither was I able to get back in time to put my comments into this committee report, so I should not be viewed as part of this discussion in this report.

I have a lot of concerns over this issue. I have thought about it quite a bit. I do agree that the Auditor General's report is pretty straightforward. It is pretty hard to contest a lot of the comments in there. It is really disappointing to see that Cabinet and their advisors did not follow the agreements that were laid out and some of the interpretation of the policy, I cannot support.

At any rate, there were a lot of infractions that happened, which was wrong. We all agree that it was wrong. However, I wanted committee to hear both sides of the story, and I had requested, when I was here yesterday, to the committee that we have some witnesses come forward so that we can hear the other side of the story -- we can hear from the Premier, we can hear from the staff and other Ministers. However, there was no interest to do so.

As an elected Member, it is my job to make decisions on behalf of my riding. Right now, as a result of this conflict of interest review and all of the incidents that have transpired over the years, we are spending up to $2 million now, and it really bothers me. Nobody has asked me for approval to spend that kind of money, yet it is being done. We have to ask ourselves, how did this happen? How do these things continue to grow and how do we...it seems like a never-ending exercise that we are in here. Is it because we received poor advice? I do not know, but certainly it is because we have a process that allows for it. For me, there are only two routes to follow here. Either we ask for a review and do corrections to the policy so that this does not happen again, or we shut this government down.

It is really difficult for me to consider stopping and trying to run for another election, or even changing the whole Cabinet or the Premier, because I have worked hard over the last three years to learn the system, to put some initiatives in place for my riding. We do not have a lot. I cannot afford... I do not have million dollar jails, or multi-million dollar jails or hospitals in my riding. All I can count on are initiatives that I have initiated in my riding and hoping that it is going to bear fruit.

We are getting close on a number of things. It is really important for me to listen to some of the chiefs that have contacted us, like Charlie Furlong and James Firth, that ask us to stay focused on the big-ticket items.

I, like everybody else here, am embarrassed by the number of incidents that have happened, where we are all labelled and painted by the same brush. Many times, more often than not, some of us do not have and have never been asked for any comments or have never been consulted on a lot of decisions. We just have to live with them.

I certainly am concerned. I am glad the Premier took the time to give us an explanation and try to justify what has happened. I do not agree with all of the Premier's explanation. However, I feel that everyone is allowed to make mistakes. Over the last three years, I am sure, more than once, for every Minister across that room, I would have liked to fire them, but we have to have an understanding that we can work together.

I am totally convinced that our Premier is very hard-working and did not go in there with the intention of pulling the wool over our eyes. It was a mistake. I am not going to support the recommendation to request his resignation. At this point, I cannot do it. Those are my comments. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The Chair has reached the end of his list of people who have...I am going to give each Member a chance to speak before I start calling Members a second time. Mrs. Groenewegen, you have not spoken yet. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to speak without notes here. Actually, when I came back down to the House, I was not going to speak at all, but I did have a statement and a speech ready for this proceeding here today, but I cannot make that speech now after listening to the Premier's comments.

The Auditor General's report is not defendable. I sent a note to the Premier this morning and asked him not to try to defend what has happened. Just be quiet and let those of us who supported him come to his defence. In spite of all of the things that have happened, you know, he has some very good attributes, which could perhaps supersede some of the things that have gone on.

I was recently in Calgary with him. I listened to him speak to a group of business people on oil and gas. I mean, this man has a lot of very good, unique qualities in leading this government, but, you know, once again today, in his defence of everything that happened, I got to be called a liar yet once again in public. I had to put up with that when I was in Cabinet. You know, I mean, there is just a limit, I suppose, to what I can take.

I mean, I guess there is a lot more, because I am so involved in all of the things that have transpired in the last year, there is probably a lot more for me in some ways to what is contained in this report than there is for some of the rest of you.

So I do not really know what to do, but like I said, I was prepared to come in here today and say that in spite of the Auditor General's report, which is not defendable. Like, why try to defend yourself against the Auditor General's report? I mean, what is in the report is true. So why waste your breath trying to say, you know, it is not? We accept the report, but are there other circumstances? Are there other circumstances that in spite of what happened, in spite of the representations made in this House and in spite of everything that has happened, that would cause us to still put our confidence in this person as Premier? That's what I was going to speak to.

We talk about judgment and lack of judgment, good judgment, bad judgment. We are all humans. We all make mistakes, you know? Mr. McLeod said we could have fired everybody over there on any given day, you know. Any of us have made mistakes.

Anyway, Mr. Chairman, I do not know what I am going to do in terms of this particular recommendation, but I will tell you, I am some disappointed in the Premier's comments this morning. You know, maybe it is time. I thought he could sit for an hour or two hours and hear respectfully what the Members on this side of the House had to say.

I had to sit for months and listen to what everybody said. I never came to my own defence once, and I still to this day have not told everything that happened, and I will tell you why. I want to protect the integrity of the Cabinet, the Premier's office, and mostly the Premier.

Somebody said I like dysfunctional relationships, I must like abusive relationships. Oh no, I do not, but loyalty has its limits, Mr. Chairman, and I am not sure what I am going to do. Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Antoine.

Thank you, Mr. Antoine. Is there anyone else who has not spoken yet that would like to speak? Mr. Ootes.

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.

Thank you, Mr. Ootes. The next Member on my list is Mr. Steen, but before I go to Mr. Steen I would like to pass on a message from Mr. Steen. I would like to welcome Mr. Eddie Dillon in the gallery, mayor of Tuktoyaktuk.

-- Applause

The Chair will recognize Mr. Steen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, like others in the Assembly here, I am disappointed that we have to spend time discussing these types of issues rather than dealing with the business at hand.

I do agree that we should permit the time that we spend on these issues if possible, but on the other hand we have to deal with what the circumstances call for. In this case, this is an ongoing issue that has been two years in the making now, and there are still things falling here.

I think that the recommendations of the committee have to be taken seriously. They have taken on a job that I am sure they did not really want, but out of necessity they had to do. I do recognize the fact that the recommendations do not include the removal of the full Cabinet, even though it could be said that we were part of the decision, because we were part of the decision. We did approve the funding before it went to the supplementary in this House. We were part of that decision, all of us. It was a Cabinet decision.

If Cabinet is supposed to stick together and show solidarity in situations like this, it is very, very difficult because we all have to start examining whether we were misled or if we have lost our trust in our leaders. It really becomes a hard decision to make. On the other hand, we have to take into consideration the fact that the people out there or the people we represent have a hard time realizing the amount of money we could spend on our salaries and benefits to our employees, even though these people are no longer employed with us.

There is no doubt that people out there are wondering what they could have done with that type of money. The amount of things they could accomplish in their communities or for their programs, and I do agree with the Members across the hall here that we do not have that kind of money to throw away. As a matter of fact I heard comments not long ago where Ethel Blondin-Andrew passed on a comment from Ottawa that the federal government believes we have enough money, we just do not handle it right. We have to take comments like that very seriously. What we do here has an effect all the way to Ottawa.

This type of decision, I do not believe, should be made in one or two hours. I see the clock is running out, it will be 2:00 soon and time to shut it down. I think that is good because I think that we should come back to this on Monday. I think this item should be set aside and we come back to it Monday for a decision.

Myself, I know that I have questions in my mind on whether to accept the full report of the committee. However, I do not think I am going to accomplish much at this point by removing our Premier. I think even calling a full election is not going to resolve the problems at home.

The people want us to do something. They do not want to spend money electing us back and forth, all of our time spent on ourselves rather than on them. So I really think we should think about putting this thing off until Monday and see if we cannot get some other work done and then come back to this thing after we have had a couple of night's sleep on it.

We are asking our Premier to step down. We should give him time to think about it. Myself, I am not prepared to vote right now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Steen. The Chair will recognize Mr. Miltenberger.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will keep my comments brief. There is a considerable amount of irony in this situation in my case, in my mind, since I was a Regular Member when a lot of the circumstances and events that have unfolded, I was on the other side of the House as a Regular Member raising concerns. Today, I find myself on Cabinet and having to deal with what will hopefully be the final chapter of this process.

I do not think, having listened to the discussion, that there is any question that there is an acceptance of the Auditor General's report, and that for me, I know that things happened that should not have happened, that there were decisions made, as the Premier indicated, that in hindsight, if he could do it over again, he would probably take a different approach.

The issue is the one of what is an acceptable consequence, and the committee has come out with a very clear position -- that they want the Premier to resign.

The Premier has indicated that we are ready and we have to respond to the report of the Auditor General, and we have to take a look at how we have done business.

For me, as a member of Cabinet, based on our discussions, the consequence of demanding the resignation of the Premier at this juncture as a member of Cabinet is not one that I will support. I will take the consequences of that with my constituents and probably with the Members of the House that are in favour of that particular recommendation. By my count, the split is very, very close.

Mr. Chairman, I called home the other day to see how my mother was doing, because my wife was travelling and I wanted to just check in. Immediately after my hello, I was given a severe tongue-lashing by my mother for the government wasting money. I know that is a sentiment we have heard expressed across the land here. She said I was still her son and welcome to come back, but we have to do better. I think that is an acknowledgement that we have all made here.

Mr. Speaker, I tend to agree with Mr. Steen, that this is a very, very significant even we have had, the initial general comments, and we are asked to make some very, very significant decisions. It is 20 to two. For me, as a member of Cabinet, I have indicated my position, but I think it would do us all well to take the weekend. Those of us who have the good fortune to be able to go to our families, our communities, to do that, and let's come back on Monday and conclude this particular situation, and then the rest of the business of this House that is before us, before the end of session next week. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Is there anyone else who has not spoken yet who would like to speak? I will go to Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think that the question of whether we continue with this or not, I would like to ask Mr. Kakfwi's opinion on that. I do not know. I guess it is the will of the House, but I do not have a...I do not know...anyway, this is a very confusing thing.

Let me just say something about what I want to say with this. I have listened very carefully to statements being made here. I think that there are some very sobering reflections and important points being made. Mr. Chairman, we have a really, really difficult system within which we try to govern. There are days when I wake up in the morning and wonder why I chose to do this and struggle every day with many of the issues that we deal with, and how we deal with issues in this House.

Mr. Chairman, I do not think there is any doubt that we have a very dysfunctional system of government here. I am not attributing that to anyone, but I do not know how a government can function when a government basically goes into a mandate question every year. We have had this since the beginning of this Assembly. I do not know how, when the representative of this government goes down to Washington or Ottawa, or dealing with self-government issues, you know, many of the issues -- does our government really have the mandate to make representation on our behalf on very important issues of the day? For example, and you know, I think everyone would agree that we have been so consumed by issues like this in this House for the last three years that, you know, we have not had a really deep discussion about what do we do about health care in the Territories? You know, there is a lot of division between small communities and big communities on that issue.

When the Power Corporation situation happened, I got, you know, a lot of calls saying we as a collective are not able and we are not making decisions on the big issues of the day. We have not really had any real serious issues here in a very, very long time.

As indicated by other Members, this conflict process has cost a lot of money, a lot of time and really crowded the agenda. You know, there is enough blame to go around everywhere. I remember talking to the media after the Auditor General's report came out. I feel like this government, well, we all are, as a Member of this government is walking around with two black eyes. We have a decision from the Supreme Court telling us what we have done wrong as a Legislature. We have an Auditor General's report telling us what we have done wrong.

I think, before the next election, I would like to see us have a serious discussion about what kind of government we have. I was recently at a conference talking about parliamentary systems. I walked away from that thinking that I like a lot of aspects of this government. As an individual Member, I have so much more privilege and power and ability to do some things here. But what that means is that it does not take a lot for one Member or a group of Members to seriously affect the agenda, and that is a good thing in many ways. But it has to come with the right checks and balances.

I think we have a very serious question here of dealing with how could we govern if every issue becomes a question of confidence in government. I am not saying that these are not. I am not saying that I am not at all questioning any Members who feel that strongly about that, but in the big scheme of things, in the very big scheme of things, you know, why is it that the very serious fiscal situation we have or the very serious health questions we have do not become the focus of the debate in this House, but something else takes on that role. And who decides what is the most important issue of the day?

If I could, and if anybody was willing to listen, I think every time we have to look at a system where every time we have a question rising here about the confidence in government, we have to be prepared to go to a general election. I mean, taking out a Premier here because all 11 of us have a vote, it is not just about Stephen Kakfwi and it is not just about Sandy Lee. It is not about anybody here personally. It is about the institution we have, it is about the government that we have for the people.

Taking out the Premier here means taking out the government. The fact that it is only limited to the limitations or potentials of our own persons, it may be too much. It could be coloured by the issues of the day for however strongly we feel about it, we may be wrong on that.

Yet we have this coming each time. I went to my website and I have a collection of speeches there, and I have made numerous speeches about stability of government or confidence in the Premier or my privilege to speak, all the issues that pertain to this institution and this government structure. This always happens each fall. It happened almost to the day last October, it happened almost to the day in October 2000 and I think that there is more to it than all of us combined there. I think we have to reflect on the system of government that we have and we have a responsibility as a whole as an elected Legislature and Member of the Legislature that governs this Territory that we have to really look at what we have here and how dysfunctional it is and how we could make it better.

I do not think there is any doubt that there is a lot of money being spent and a lot more being spent that need not be spent that way, whether it is by the process in the House or the separation packages we have been paying out or any of the court decisions or court imposed settlements that we may have to take. There is a cost to that.

The cost that we cannot determine right now is how is -- I remember last time when the Premier had to face a confidence question here, he was crisscrossing the whole globe, pushing for a pipeline agenda. I remember it was very close to the day and I was thinking, well how does he walk in and meet with the officials in Washington or Ottawa when everybody back home is asking for his head?

You know really, we could ask for his head on anything as long as enough of us on this side agree to it. I think there has to be more to that. There has to be more than just the numbers in this House to ask for his head and that connecting thing is what the people out there think.

Do people out there really want us to do that? Do people out there really want to make sure that these separation agreements in here, termination agreements are dealt with, or do they want his head? I guess some do. Then we have to think about the bigger picture of, where do we go from there? I cannot imagine anybody wanting to take the office of Premier, anybody, for one year. What could he or she manage in the next year?

Removal of the Cabinet? You know we do this so often because we can do it and there are no repercussions on this side of the House for saying so, really. I do not think I have made it clear there but I have laid out my position in my minority report, I still have questions and concerns about some of the findings of the Auditor General's report in terms of the way it does not follow with the government position and as Mr. McLeod stated, we had two days to do this. I do not feel we gave enough time to it.

I do not believe that the removal of the Premier is the answer to anything. I do believe that he is a good leader and we have to judge him in totality. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have had a couple of very sincere pleas for some time to reflect on this, perhaps gather in the views of our constituents or the people whose opinions we value on this. It is tempting, I guess, to seek the votes that we are anticipating on the committee motions and have at least a couple of those decisions made today. I am just deliberating here, Mr. Chairman, whether to make a motion that we extend hours to conclude consideration of this item or to let the clock run out and we come back and revisit this on Monday.

I have a general sense that I think people would appreciate the time, so I am not going to make that motion. Another Member will, of course, with the concurrence of the Chair, but I would like to use a couple more minutes. I will not run down all of my time to reflect, Mr. Chairman, on some of Mr. Handley's remarks.

He has voiced I think quite clearly and plainly the option that is always before a Legislative Assembly and that is to shut down or conclude its mandate and go to the polls. Indeed that is an option that has been at the backs of just about everybody's mind here. I want to thank Mr. Handley for bringing it forward.

If we get into this and decide that the best thing for this Legislative Assembly, the 14th Legislative Assembly, is to fold our tent and go back to our constituents, perhaps here is some timing that we should look at.

I am looking, Mr. Chairman, at the federal political agenda. I suggested that if we shut this Assembly down now, what would we have? A caretaker government here for three or four months. I think it would take and should take that long for us to actually go to the polls. So potentially we see an election in February of 2003. It will take us three months to get a mandate. This is consensus government, so our next Assembly will not be up and running until the late spring of 2003.

I think we can anticipate, Mr. Chairman, that Ottawa and the decision-making capacity at the federal government will shut down next summer in anticipation of the federal Liberal leadership convention in November. The leader will take office in February of 2004 and how many months is it from there that that new leader is going to be ready to take action on decisions and projects and initiatives from the Northwest Territories?

I would suggest that we are really looking at about 18 months from now before our new government and the new regime in Ottawa would be able to get back to business and in the meantime I propose, or I say again as I did earlier, that we have agendas now that we can continue to move on. I would urge that is what we do.

Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to offer that reflection on I think the position we would be putting ourselves in in relation to Ottawa. So much of what we need depends on getting the attention down there and we do not have much time left before that clock is going to overtake ours. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. The Chair recognizes Mr. Roland.