Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak against this motion. I have read the motion. I have some questions on the whereas clauses of this motion.

Mr. Speaker, as the motion states, we were elected into this House in December of 1999. I believe that we were given a mandate by the people who voted us in here. At least, I know that I was given a mandate by the constituents of Range Lake, to do the best job I can to represent them in this House for the duration of time that they elected me into this honourable House. Mr. Speaker, I do not believe that there is anyone in this House with power to take that mandate away from me.

Mr. Speaker, as I think about this motion, and I have thought about this and other things that have been happening in this House, it has saddened me greatly to see what has transpired and some of the verbal exchanges that have happened. In all honesty, and in the deepest of my heart, I am not sure if, even if we had the power to do so and even if we were to deny the mandate that the people have given us, that it will serve the best interest of the people in dissolving this House.

Mr. Speaker, I am reminded of a phrase, you know, this is not our sandbox. This is a very serious place that we have been elected to be in to serve the people. This is an honourable House. This is where we were sent by the people to make important decisions. I think it is highly irresponsible for us to say okay, that some of us or all of us even disagree with something so badly that we are just going to pick up our toys and go home and we are going to ask somebody to send us back to the sandbox so that we could come back and play some more.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the issues the Members are raising. It is obvious to me that we have a lot of work to do, so where is the accountability on the part of the Members to say how can we make this work? There is no question in my mind that there is a lot of mending to do.

Mr. Speaker, for me, another reason that I cannot agree with this motion is that I simply have a lot of work to do. I went back and read my election platform, which is on my website, and there are a lot of things that I set out to work for on behalf of the people who elected me.

One of the things is a comprehensive recruitment and retention plan for health care professionals. We are on the verge of getting that, if I was to believe the promises made by the Minister of Health. I believe that I owe it to the people in my riding to see that happens, or at least do my best until the very last day to see that.

There are so many things in my platform that I had promised and I am not going to give up at this point and nobody here is going to take that mandate given to me by my people, the people who have elected me in this House. Mr. Speaker, I am not going to go into details of my platform, that is something that I share with my constituents.

The second thing, Mr. Speaker, I take a great offence to anybody here that suggests that somehow I have breached the oath I have sworn at the beginning of this Assembly. That is such a serious allegation. That cannot be made in the heat of the moment, in reaction to something or because we simply do not like the decisions that were made in this House.

Mr. Speaker, I more than any other person here have shown my temper. I have disliked many choices that were made here. I felt that I was violated at times, that my right to speak was breached. There were many occasions where I stayed up all night trying to think about what the best thing to do was. Never once did I think that I had the power to take the mandate of each Member of this House, which was given to them by the people they represent, by the people they were elected to come here for. I take great offence at anybody in this House that suggests that they have the power to take that away from the constituents of my riding.

Mr. Speaker, in one of the clauses it says that the Legislature is of the view that the electorate of the Northwest Territories must continue to hold the Legislative Assembly accountable for its actions. We speak often about the notion of accountability in this House, and under the system that we have, the only people I am accountable to are the people in Range Lake who have elected me into this House.

Going by the hits I am getting on my website, I have no doubt that this has been a hot issue. Mr. Speaker, I have gotten about 1,000 hits on my website on average this month, and I have seen a graph of it, and the highest graph height is on October 16th, October 25th and October 28th. On my website, there is, word for word, what I have said in this House. I know that in a small way I am being accountable to what I am saying in this House and I have been on the phone talking to people and I have found that when I talked to them and explained to them what is going on and why I am doing what I am doing or say the things I do or the positions I am taking or the votes I am doing, they understand.

They may not all agree, but they understand. I do not need anybody in this House telling me that I am not being accountable to the people who voted me in. In fact, I intend to take the time in the next days and weeks to go out there and explain more about what is going on in this House because as everyone here knows, when we are embroiled in the issues in this House we have very little time to be out there and to talk to the people. I need to do that.

I take offence to anybody who says that I am not being accountable in my job or that I have in any way breached my oath.

I am very puzzled about this clause in the motion that suggests that we are somehow violating the people's right to vote. That is just a point I want to make. I am not going to go there.

Mr. Speaker, on a final point I have said many times in this House that I believe this issue is a lot more than what is going on here. I think that if we had a heart and we really believed in the public interest of this Assembly and the people we serve that we owe it to ourselves to step back and look at why we are where we are and how we got to where we got to, and can we really say, can everyone of us really say that we are blameless?

I think there is enough indignation, righteousness, sanctimoniousness going around for everybody to share here. Equally, there is enough blame to go around for what has happened. As I walk around the hall of this Assembly, Mr. Speaker, and I have said that to a reporter, last week was not a good week for this Assembly. We had this Auditor General report that said things had to be changed and then we had a court decision that told us the same.

So we are walking around with two black eyes and I do not understand why the Members of this House are so much in a hurry to rush out there and show the world that we have two big black eyes that we have gotten from the authorities much higher and maybe wiser than we are, because we are so embroiled in the issues here that we cannot see from the top to the bottom.

I think we owe it to the people, we owe it to the issues we are dealing with here to deal with those two black eyes, to see how we can improve the situation and spend the rest of the time hopefully concentrating on the many, many issues that I cannot even go through and move on. For that reason, I will not be supporting this motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.