Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Also, obviously Mr. Chairman I support the committee's report and recommendations. I think that after seeing this report of the Auditor General the things that I felt had probably happened were confirmed. I will admit I was not surprised. We had a lot of indication of much of this behind closed doors yet we were unable to get the answers and responses to any of these questions in public because of the government's insistence and assertion that there were privacy issues that would come to bear here, therefore we needed to go to the Auditor General and uncover this and bring these issues forward so that they could see the light of day.

I think that the Auditor General in stating that further, "We found no justification for paying the significantly higher termination payments and benefits." I think that that is the issue that much of the public is concerned about. I have had people call me and say, "How can you arrange a termination payout and contract for one individual that does not conform to their employment contract?" It is unprecedented. This government has not done it before; paid huge amounts of money over and above what was warranted in the contract and then said to me "Surely to God some laws were broken."

I think that is the really concerning thing here, Mr. Chairman. No laws were broken. There is so much power concentrated in the office of our Premier that they have the ability to crumple up existing contracts and rewrite them. They only have to be willing to sign them. It is a huge responsibility, the job of Premier and Mr. Chairman, certainly not something that we take lightly. We have to put a great deal of faith and trust in that individual that they will use that power and that authority wisely.

I think the Auditor General has clearly shown us that this was not a prudent use of funds and it was only allowed to happen because it could, Mr. Chairman, not because it was justified.

I think the more we go through this and the more we dissect it, we realize that so much of it is about bad decisions everywhere. Were the bad decisions made by staff, or were they made by the Premier? Did the Premier receive bad advice on a number of occasions? I have no reason to doubt that. I continue to see what I believe to be bad advice coming forward to our government in dealing with this situation even now.

This agenda of deflecting the real issue and trying to refute and counter anything that the Auditor General has found and discovered in my mind makes no sense, and is exactly the political opposite of what we should be doing.

Mr. Chairman, if you look at the issue of anticipated liability, our government says we had to pay a whack of money over and above what was entitled in a contract because we felt that the former chief of staff might be able to sue us for wrongful dismissal. For some reason, we were not concerned about Mr. Bayly's ability to do that, just Ms. Sorensen's. This, Mr. Chairman, is despite the fact that we know the position was at-pleasure. The Auditor General refers to that as well, when she says "At-pleasure appointments are positions that may be terminated by the employer at any time, with or without cause," Mr. Chairman. Despite that, we saw fit to pay, in this one instance, a lot of money over and above what was entitled to that individual in the contract. Furthermore, we had no legal representation, nobody looking out for the public's best interests in these negotiations. It makes you wonder if our government thought that Ms. Sorensen's lawyer, who obviously did a very good job, was also looking out for the public interest. I think we can clearly see that there is no way to reconcile those two interests. If that is indeed what our government thought, it is embarrassing, Mr. Chairman.

If we look at the issue of performance pay, we know from listening to the Auditor General's staff yesterday that the Premier provided the direction to Ms. Snider to pay maximum performance pay to both Mr. Bayly and Ms. Sorensen, despite the fact that they had letters of reprimand on file. When we asked for clarification, the Auditor General's indication was that he was told that they had done a great job, but there were no specifics as to the objectives they had met or anything like this, no discussion of the criteria they had met in order to warrant, and this is important, maximum performance pay, Mr. Chairman.

I think the message that sends to the public of the Northwest Territories, and indeed all public servants, is certainly the wrong one. Clearly we do not consider criteria, never mind documentation. There is no way it could have ever been even considered, Mr. Chairman, if we are going to indicate that these two individuals deserved maximum performance pay.

So the fact that the termination contract was absolutely not linked to the employment contract in the former chief of staff's situation, is unprecedented. We have not seen this before in the Northwest Territories. Certainly the Auditor General did not uncover this in any of her research in looking at past contracts, and there was no indication from our staff to the Auditor General's office that this was something we normally do, because quite clearly, Mr. Chairman, this is something that we normally do not do.

I think I have also spoken to the fact that now, in the aftermath of this report, we continue to see bad decisions being made, and I think these ones are bad political decisions. We know that our government is out there trying to refute and counter just about everything that the Auditor General has found. Late in the game, after they had an indication of what was coming out in the Auditor General's report, they hustled together an internal legal opinion without even...the legal opinion was written without even seeing the Auditor General's report. There are all kinds of problems in it. It refers to clauses in Ms. Sorensen's contract that do not even exist, Mr. Chairman. I guess that is not surprising, given that not all of the information was present when this legal opinion was written.

It even goes so far as to refer and try to make the case for deputy minister benefits being paid in Ms. Sorensen's case. It indicates that for the purposes of her agreement, where it says deputy minister, we are talking about Ms. Sorensen. We know in the House, Mr. Chairman, clearly both the Premier and the Finance Minister have suggested that, and I am quoting now from October 31st Hansard, page 635. This is the Premier: "We also created a chief of staff position. The chief of staff position is in fact an executive assistant position that has additional responsibilities."

I mean, this legal opinion basically refutes what both our Premier and Finance Minister have said in Hansard. That was October 31, 2001, I believe. I just think that continually, we seem to make political indiscretions here that seem certainly not prudent.

We talk about net present values of paying Ms. Sorensen in a spread-out fashion as opposed to a lump sum and indicate that this probably saved us money. This is absolutely false, Mr. Chairman. The way we paid out this money, not only did it make us susceptible to further legal liability if there are disability issues, but it pays out additional benefits and allows for more and more pension to be grossed up by extending the length of employment. There is no way that, if the proper information was provided to this person who wrote the legal opinion, they could ever have said that when you look at the time value of money, that this was a cheaper way to do it. You cannot just discount back to the present some future cash flows and ignore the ones you do not want to talk about, Mr. Chairman. That is just craziness. The fact that this was presented to Mr. Voytilla's office and still managed to make it out of that office is something that amazes me.

Mr. Chairman, I do have many, many concerns, I guess, as we go through the Auditor General's report. I think Mr. Braden has put it fairly succinctly, and I think we disagree on one point. He indicates that it is probably warranted for us to ask the Premier to step aside because of his involvement, but he feels it would be more detrimental to us going forward to have a change of Premier. I agree with Mr. Braden, except to say that I think if we do not have a change of Premier, we will be mired in this discussion and conflict for some time to come, and absolutely be stuck and not able to carry on and go forward and achieve the good things we need to. Thank you.

We are dealing with Committee Report 11-14(5). General comments. Mr. Nitah. Mr. Kakfwi.

Mr. Chairman, at some point or other, before I am convicted, I would like to get a chance to account for myself, so the Members have an opportunity to hear from my side. That has been totally absent. I think this Legislature is for accountability. Before you convict me, I want to be heard. I am disappointed in Mr. Bell, because yesterday, he assured me he would be prepared to wait and see what I had to say before he passed judgment. I see that he has failed to keep that...

Excuse me, Mr. Kakfwi. We are dealing with a committee report that is before the House. Every Member has a right to comment on the report in regard to general comments. By raising your hand, you will be recognized on the list.

-- Interjection

Well, there is a long list here with Members who have shown an interest by raising their hand. I ask Members who would like to speak, could you please raise your hand? General comments. Mr. Nitah.

General comments. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the Premier stated earlier that he would like an opportunity to speak to the report, and before I make my comments I would gladly let the Premier take my spot so that we can hear some of his comments, and then I would like to be put on the list so that I could speak to them.

Are you making a recommendation, Mr. Roland?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yes I would recommend to the committee here that Premier Kakfwi be given his time allotment to speak to the report in his own defence, I guess, and then I would like to then continue with the list that you have there. Thank you.

Does the committee agree?

At this time I will recognize Mr. Kakfwi, then Mr. Roland, Ms. Lee and Mr. Delorey. Mr. Kakfwi.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank Mr. Roland for his generous offer, and I am very happy to take it. I apologize to Members for my remarks earlier. I can tell you that I have a very strong and sincere desire for this Legislature to look credible and to be accountable. I guess recently, we do not appear that way to the public. I know that people are wondering why we are still embroiled and submerged in this debate that started so long ago, because of license plates -- innocuous enough -- and the fact that a lawyer forgot to strike out a name as a board of director during legal filing.

The cost to this Legislature and to the people of the North has been immeasurable. The consequences of it I believe are going to be felt across this country, not only in the Northwest Territories.

In a recent Supreme Court ruling John Vertes handed down -- and it is tabled in this House -- speaks to the fact that we make mistakes and that we have to account for it. These two things are connected, for me.

There are a number of issues that I need to speak to. The first one, of course, I will speak to is the Auditor General's report. The report is, the report that we take seriously, the Auditor General had her staff come here, do interviews, go through files, and they accepted certain documentation and others they said were not relevant. They have a way of doing things that, as they say themselves, is black and white.

I accept that the recommendations, or the conclusions of the recommendation, of the Auditor General and find this government to have not followed their policies. I look back on what we have done and I ask the staff, could we have done some things differently? On the years of service, for instance, that is the understanding that every deputy minister in this government has, that they will get one month for every year of service, not the number of years they were a deputy minister, but the total number of years they served this government. Previous packages to deputy ministers who left this government had that. There were deputy ministers who left with 25 months, just based on the years of service.

So while the Auditor General says that this is totally unacceptable and outside the policy, it is my understanding that what we are asking is, can we take that out because the Auditor General says it is not in our policy? Deputy ministers, senior managers, people who serve at pleasure do not have the protection of unions. And it is true, Mr. Bell, that they serve at pleasure. Every one of these deputy ministers can be given a days notice, two minutes notice and say you are gone. We have to show some cause for it, that is true.

What the Auditor General did not accept is that in the case of Lynda Sorensen, the Cabinet eliminated her job while she was still employed by us. The reason the Auditor General does not accept that is because there is no record of decision. So the proper documentation was not there. As far as they are concerned, her job was not eliminated.

So we do not have trouble with what the Auditor General says. Of course we can get rid of people at pleasure. We have to pay, but we can get rid of them. That is true. It is a different set of circumstances when you do away with somebody's job while they are in it, and then later also say a Minister has said they will not work with you anymore, so we have a problem.

So not only was her job done away with, but she was also forced into her resignation. I tell you that not to refute the Auditor General's report, but certainly because she says and her staff says "We deal in black and white things. No record of decision -- we do not accept it. As far as we are concerned, the chief of staff position still exists."

But in this Legislature, I announced to you that Cabinet had decided that the chief of staff was going to be done away with and I announced it. It was a fact. It is no longer on organization charts. This is what we have done.

Looking back, as you know, we had a motion of confidence. This Legislature went to extreme lengths to deal with an issue. We dealt with it. The day after that, we had a threat of a Minister resigning, in my view, if this was not dealt with. So I was forced to deal with it. The choice was clear. The staff person went, the Minister stayed. The instructions were do it and do it quickly.

You know, what political motive do you have to try to continue saying or wanting to believe that I was involved in it? The Auditor General says I was not involved in it. There is no evidence to support that fact. Politically, if you want to believe it, that is something else and you should say that, that somehow we just believe you did something wrong. We just cannot prove it. That is okay to say that but say it.

All I can tell you is that was the instruction; do it and do it quickly. In retrospect, I should have said just get it done and take a week, two weeks, but we wanted conclusion. That was the political situation in which I dealt with it and the staff dealt with it. The Auditor General is totally oblivious to that because she is dealing with things in hindsight. She was not there. She did not go through the things I had went through. She did not deal with the stuff that the staff dealt with. It is hindsight.

There is a question about the additional pay, the additional months that were added on to what we gave her because of her years of service. As I understand it, we gave her one month for every year of service, as we have done with every other deputy minister who has ever served this government, and we are going to probably do, either because it is our policy or because the courts will force us to, because the contracts we have signed with them will force us to.

Cabinet has said we take the Auditor General's report seriously, therefore we are prepared to work with you. You are very concerned about the fact that there are allegations we did not follow our policies, that we are too generous, because concerns about the performance appraisal, which I will address shortly. We want to address that.

We made a decision yesterday. We offered it to you. We said let us meet so we can convey that.

Mr. Chairman...

Mr. Kakfwi, your time has expired. The procedure is that every Member has ten minutes to speak under general comments to the committee report that is in front of us. Mr. Kakfwi.

Mr. Chairman, can I ask for the support of the Members to conclude my statements, please?

Does the committee agree to allow the Premier to conclude his statement?

Agreed. Mr. Kakfwi, you can conclude your statement.

Thank you. On the issue of merit pay, merit pay is done by myself and for deputy ministers it is done by Liz Snider as secretary to Cabinet. She brings the recommendations to me. We discuss them and we give them. Nobody else does that. All the deputy ministers are done by myself and Ms. Snider. For the principal secretary and the chief of staff, they work for Cabinet; I do that. I discuss it with Liz Snider, secretary to Cabinet, and we look at the performance of all the deputy ministers, all the senior managers in government and that is how it is done.

I have said in this House before, so you can at least accept that I am not saying it just because I want to now, I have always held Mr. Bayly in the highest esteem, and so have you. He is hard working, he is a man of integrity who admitted a mistake.

Lynda Sorensen, hard working, a long record in government in the public service without any blemish, none whatsoever. She put long hours in. Her work was exemplary.

Both of these individuals worked together as a team. High stress, long hours and they performed their job extremely well. We gave other deputy ministers maximum performance merit pay because they also performed outstanding work. So when you put it all together they were a group of senior managers that we felt did exemplary work. Some were considered very well, some perhaps did not deliver as well as they could have, so they were not rated the same.

We had an order from the Special Committee on Conflict Process that we were not to talk about this issue or do anything that might be construed to interfere with the deliberations and the issues before this committee. We could not talk about it, could not take it into consideration, so set that aside.

Having said that, it is true. The issue was there. I discussed the taping incident with my staff and I said in this Legislature that it was my idea to issue the letters of reprimand. I issued them because I thought this is important to acknowledge that there was a concern there. How far could I go? I could not ask them about it, I could not talk about it because the committee said, "Don't talk about it." Joe could not talk to me about many things. I could not talk to the staff, I could not talk to you.

There was this difficulty that was created. The staff acknowledged that it happened. They made their regrets. I accept that, but I could not put the consideration and say, "Look, I have..." and then go contrary to the committee and say, "Because of what happened in this and that, I am not going to give you what I think you deserve. " I could not do that. That is where the performance pay is. That is why it is there.

It is not because I am friends with John and friends with Lynda. It is because they performed a job at a level compared to the best and highest performing DMs we had at that time. That is how I considered it.

For the letter of reprimand, the staff said they did not think it was warranted, and certainly because we could not talk about it, what could we do? I just said, "Look, they admitted to it. They admitted a mistake was made." To this day I still believe that Lynda did not see the taping because if she had, she would have seen me.

So, that is what we had. It is important for me to tell you how I saw that at that time, and that is how I see it. Responsibility was taken, it was done. The committee was going to deal with it. The committee has said as far as they are concerned she did something seriously wrong and so that is what happened.

This Legislature accepted the recommendations of the committee. We now find the Supreme Court to say that committee made some serious mistakes. We are not talking about that yet, but we should because it is connected.

It is true that we should account for ourselves and I appreciate the fact that Members have allowed me to do that. It is important, before you draw your conclusions as I said earlier, to decide to convict me and to restore integrity and dignity to this Legislature, we have to follow due process. There has to be some process that we take.

We have to be fair to our employees. That is a legal duty we have. We have a legal duty to do that. I look back on what happened and ask myself, would I have done something different? I must tell you, sure. Maybe I should have approached the performance appraisal differently with John and with Lynda.

I acknowledge that I could have done that differently. There is the issue of the policies that we have. Were they followed? The Auditor General says we did not. Okay. As a Cabinet we said, "Let's sit down and look at it and see. What is the practice we want when we have termination packages? What are the policies and let's review them." Prepare to fix, if we want to build something constructive out of this, we are prepared to do that.

I acknowledge we did it quickly and I acknowledge I would have done it differently. We could have said just give her a month for every year of service, but that is it. Let her take us to court. I could have done that. Would that have been more acceptable to you? We would have gone to court. She might have got one additional month, she might have got 12 months. We do not know that. What we know is that we would have spent an estimate of at least $50,000 in the courts on our side alone. If we lost, which we thought we would lose because we eliminated her job from her, that we would lose. The courts are absolutely clear on that. When you do away with somebody's job when they are still in it, they take you to court and they win every time.

Mr. Chairman, can I continue?

Mr. Kakfwi, I did allow you ample time to conclude. You had 20 minutes. To be fair to the other Members, I do have quite a few other Members on the list who would like to speak to this matter. At this time, I would like to move on. Next on my list is Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I had asked that we would allow the Premier to speak to the issue as he had requested. I was hopeful that he might be able to shed something new onto the report, or something that was not in the report or lacking.

Mr. Chairman, I must go back to what we see in the report. There has been no further information provided that would refute the findings of this report. As we have heard Members speak around this House about the credibility of government, Mr. Chairman, I must say when we first came here, we took an oath of office. We took an oath of office to perform our duties to the best of our abilities. Not only that, we were made very aware that we must not only keep the law but we must be seen to keep the law.

Mr. Chairman, the report puts out, in very plain, clear language, that we, as Members of this House, were concerned about when the supplementary appropriation bill came through here. We felt that we were not getting the responses that were required to bring this matter to conclusion. A motion went through this House, a majority of Members, to have this done. This is now done and it brings out very clearly the facts. The facts are not disputed. Senior staff were given an opportunity to refute the facts and that was not done.

Mr. Chairman, the report, as I said, is very clear. Some may find it difficult to mark things down in black and white. I do not think that should be a concern of us. I think we should try to make everything black and white so the people of the Northwest Territories know where we stand as the Government of the Northwest Territories. Let's not mix the colours and come up with grey and say, well, what if somehow, some way we will make it happen.

I am going to try to be civil about this, Mr. Chairman, about what we found in this report. I am very concerned, as I was when this thing first occurred. The Premier stated that it has been...some people are asking why are we still embroiled in this. I remember making a statement in this House, a fact that this could have concluded very early in the process by a couple of quick words, humble words, of apology to the people for the conduct of this government. But that was not taken in.

I am even more concerned with the facts, what the Premier stated in his comments. I will want to review that in unedited Hansard, because he seems to be contradicting what has been said in the past in this House.

Mr. Speaker, this report states about the level of pay of one of the individuals -- two individuals, but one specifically of such an excess overpayment, and at what level they should have been paid. For months and months we were told in this House that that was in fact not a deputy minister position, but an executive assistant position. If that is the case, then the findings of the report are accurate, and it is past the 11th hour, Mr. Chairman -- not the 11th hour, but past the 11th hour, past midnight, in the darkness of night, I guess one can say, the fact that a letter went back to the Auditor General to say, "Wait a second, you misinterpreted. Here's a couple of clauses that should have been read." Now we are hearing in this House that in fact, that was a deputy minister position.

It further adds to my very serious concern of the credibility of this government.

Once again, there is no refuting of the facts here. Once again, in the Auditor General's report, as part of the report, appendices were clauses from the termination agreements of the employee contracts that were initially signed. When we asked the Auditor General in our meeting if it was normal when a termination negotiation took place that there was substantial change from the termination agreement in those contracts, we were told no, that this instance, it was highly unusual. Now, there is opportunity and Members are saying, "Well, let's fix this. Let's put in some rules and regulations. Let's make a new policy and tighten this up. We will not do this again."

Mr. Chairman, the simple matter of fact is policies that were in place were not adhered to -- I repeat, were not adhered to. So putting a new policy or regulation in place, what does that do? Does that fix the situation? No, it does not fix the situation. It does not bring back into the light our concerns that this government has done things that were not appropriate, that went outside the bounds.

In the report, we were told that the chief of staff position was not in fact done away with because there is no decision. They were just pointed out that, well, we were told the chief of staff position did not show up in the next business plan organization chart. Would that be because maybe that position did not legally exist to begin with, as I questioned in this House? It did not fall into the Public Service Act? Maybe that's how simple it was to get rid of it. It just showed up, it can just disappear.

Mr. Chairman, we have power in this House, and a lot of responsibility comes with that power. Ultimate authority comes to this House for the laws that we tell citizens, rich and poor, that they have to follow.

Mr. Chairman, we have to follow the responsibility of those laws by showing that we will adhere to our own rules and regulations, that we will follow the rules of the land we put in place. To try and stand up in this House to say that this is just a minor slip-up, that we can fix it with some paperwork and more writing, in grey ink, that we will fix the rest of this country, this Northwest Territories. We would fall far short of the expectations of good government, Mr. Chairman. And I go back and remind Members that when we came into this House, when we were sworn in, we swore to do the job to the best of our abilities, to follow the rules. We are all aware that not only are we to follow the letter of the law, we are to be seen to follow the letter of the law, Mr. Chairman.

I must say that for somebody who has had as much experience in this setting, as a Member of the Legislative Assembly, as a Member of the Executive Council since he became a Member of this government many years ago, that that still seems not to be able to register from what I have heard today. It is not registering.

That is very concerning to me, that the actions that were taken were still not considered to be bad. It is clear in this report. We finally got it received in this House, the information that we could not get from the Members opposite. I am very concerned that now as a government we are going to condone the actions by saying, wait a second we have a year left, let's hold on to the ship here. I ask Members, is there a ship to hold on to? I would rather say that we do not have enough bailing cans to bail this thing out so we can stay afloat. If we are not willing to take the challenge to show the people of the Northwest Territories that there is good government here, that we are willing to stand up and represent them, rich and poor.

I say, Mr. Chairman, that my interest when we started this was on the conduct of accountable government. By this report it only confirms my concerns with accountable government and the lack of. I say that we had better be willing to act on this. We had better be willing to show the people of the Northwest Territories that we are here to do a job and a credible job. We hear about what happens if someone goes to Ottawa to go for money, or what does happen when we stand there and behave like a third world country and say, we do not care about our laws, we're going to do our thing anyway. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would just like to remind the Members that they may speak more than once on this issue that is before us, but to be fair to all the other Members I would like to allow for all Members to have an opportunity to speak, and I will recognize you at the next round of discussions. I am not trying to exclude debate, but I would just like to be fair to all Members. I have Ms. Lee next on the list.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I am not sure if I can follow up on these seasoned orators here. I guess I made my job more difficult by writing my minority report because I do not want to read the report into the record, but I am not sure if I do not how it could be put into the record because the minority report is not read in the same time as the majority report because that is the rule. Perhaps I could just go over my stances on this, and there are so many other issues pertaining to this, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, my position is that I read the majority report and considered all of the information coming out of the committee proceedings, and I must respectfully disagree with the majority report. My concerns, Mr. Chairman, had to do with regard to procedural and substantive issues. Mr. Chairman, as we are well aware the report, which I will be calling the Auditor General's report from here on, was only tabled two days ago and we had very few days to consider it. Although we had the chance to meet with the Auditor General and her officials, we have not had the opportunity until this forum to hear the other side of the story as it relates to the Auditor General's report.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that this is important since there are some significant differences between the position of the GNWT and the Auditor General. I believe that there is a question of fairness here too because I think we have advised by no other authority than the courts and just out of common standard, that when we are accusing someone of having done something terribly wrong our first response should be that we should give them a chance to explain themselves. I think that we expect that as a person and we expect that as a parent. Our children would probably ask for an opportunity to explain themselves if we say that they have done something wrong. We would expect that as a public person too.

I know that we do things that not everyone agrees with, and certainly that is very common in our job, but I am sure that all of us say to whoever has a claim against us to say, let me give my side of the story. Based on the process we have followed in a very short period of time I do not believe that we have done that.

Mr. Chairman, as to the majority report I do not have problems with the first and second paragraphs, but I did mention some of the things that I did not agree with on paragraph three and that has to do with the original motion of this House that sent the report to the Auditor General in the first place back in March. At the time I voted against the motion and I did for the reasons that are the same as the ones I have today about the fact that there was a need to have the special audit done on this.

Mr. Chairman, my point is that number one from the information given by the officials who were called in as witnesses during the committee of the whole debate I had no reason to question their claim that they accepted that normal practice and procedures were followed with regard to the negotiation of the separation agreements. I am not saying that things could not have been done better, but based on what I heard from the senior officials of the government who appeared before us in this House, it seemed reasonable to me that they followed the practices and procedures that they normally followed.

Mr. Chairman, secondly and more importantly, at the time when this motion was being debated to take it to special audit of the Auditor General we were cautioned repeatedly by the Minister responsible for the Public Service, the Honourable Joe Handley, that this government had a contractual obligation to respect the confidentiality provision of the separation agreements in question of both Ms. Sorensen and Mr. Bayly. We were communicated about this in writing, verbally and repeatedly. I felt that as a legislator I must respect that obligation as well.

Mr. Chairman, this might be a good time to point out the fact that we have a Supreme Court decision that has come down to us not too long ago -- just a few days ago -- that makes it very clear that this Legislature is not above the law. If we have a law that governs us and we set laws that govern others, they apply to us as well and we cannot willy-nilly ignore those laws.

This relates to my third point which was my concern that what we are doing here may breach the privacy concerns of those people involved. I accept that we had varied advice and opinions in this regard. However, as an elected official it was my prerogative to make a judgment, and I chose to honour this obligation. I believed then, and I believe now, that there is a real potential issue with the privacy rights of these employees.

Mr. Chairman, I am only on to the second page of my minority report and it is very clear to me that I am not going to read all that into the record, but I think that is really really crucial for us to know that when we are talking about this debate we are taking about real people. We are talking about senior officials an senior officials are at pleasure. Every deputy minister that walks into our government to work for us knows that they could be gone tomorrow, and that is what is meant by at pleasure. But does that mean that their career, their personal reputation and their integrity could be tarnished and mud thrown around them, especially when they do not have an opportunity to answer to that?

As politicians we choose to be here. We have a presence in this House. We have a seat here. We can defend ourselves. We have all sorts of means to do that, but our senior officials do not. So at pleasure does not mean that a politician, a group of politicians or even a Legislature wakes up the next morning and says, we do not like what you are doing, we do not like your political agenda or we do not like for whatever reason. Perhaps we do have the power to say, you have to go, but it doesn't mean that they can go without any redress to...

-- Break in Recording

...do we want to start a full-blown debate on this issue again? Start bringing in a whole bunch of witnesses, getting another bunch of opinions? I do not think it is in our best interest to do that. I certainly do not want to do it. I think it is in the best interest of this government and the people of the North to try to get this thing behind us and do what we have to do.

Mr. Chairman, the bottom line is very simple. I do not think we are left with a lot of options. When I made my decision to support, not support, if I have to vote, not vote, my choice will be made on a very simple thing. It will be made on, do I support how this money was expended or do I not? I cannot truthfully go back to my constituents and say that I support the way this money was expended. To me, I think that is the question that I have to answer and answer very truthfully.

I feel that I owe it to my constituents to be truthful, to be honest with myself and I am sure when I go back to my riding, and I am going this weekend, that I will hear from the ones, many more and I have already heard from some of them, Mr. Chairman, but I will hear from a lot more I am sure when I go back to Hay River and I have no problem going back and facing them and answering questions and telling them that I did it believing that my set of values, my set of principles were taken into consideration and their views were taken into consideration as well. I base my choice on those.

I think there was a comment made that we choose to be here. We may choose to run for election, but we do not choose to be here beyond that. Our constituents choose whether we are going to be here or not. I think that if I am going to be here in the future it will be up to my constituents to decide that.

I promise my constituents right now that I will continue to make decisions based on what I think is right and in their best interests. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.