Mr. Chairman, this would be very personal information.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, this is a discretionary benefit we are speaking of, of a financial nature, granted to the third party by a public body, so how could that be considered very personal?

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, the government has entered into contractual obligations and it is incumbent on us to keep these settlement agreements confidential. To divulge this would be, I think, clearly a violation of the party's interests.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So the Minister is stating that in fact, a public expenditure over $514,000, over half a million dollars, is not of interest to the public of the Northwest Territories and should remain in the dark as to how these benefits were arrived at? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, I am sure this is of interest to the public, but as I say, we have entered into settlement agreements and we have agreed to keep that confidential. The only way we would be able to agree to disclose the contents of those agreements would be subject to the third party notices that are required under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. We cannot disclose it otherwise. As I said, I did give the information on a confidential basis to the Members yesterday, but through the agreements we have entered into, we cannot disclose this without going back to the third party members. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. The Chair will recognize Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It appears that we are going to have a bit of an ATIPP debate before we get into the actual details here. I would challenge the Minister's position on the legislation and reiterate what Mr. Roland has said, and that is that a disclosure of personal information is not an unreasonable invasion of a third party's personal privacy where the personal information relates to the third party's classification, salary range, discretionary benefits or employment responsibilities as an officer, employee or member of the public body, or as a member of the staff of a member of the Executive Council.

If there is any doubt as to whether or not we are talking about discretionary benefits, I can quote a letter which I am prepared to distribute to all of the Members that was dated November 17th from the Premier to the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight, in which he states:

I agree that the release of information concerning the chief of staff's classification, salary range, employment responsibilities and discretionary benefits does not constitute an unreasonable invasion of privacy and I am therefore prepared to report the following.

Under the discretionary benefits section, it says a listing is offered in Attachment A. Attachment A gets into leave, termination, performance, pay, et cetera. I would be prepared to distribute this letter from the Premier to our committee to all Members in the House here to indicate that the Premier, in fact, agrees that this is not an unreasonable invasion of privacy.

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Handley.

Mr. Chairman, first of all, let me say that we could debate the provisions in ATIPP for a long time, probably because I think there is some uncertainty and various opinions of what can be released, but we do know that once private information is released, it cannot be recalled. I think that good prudence will tell us that we should at least give the third party an opportunity to intervene if they choose to do so. We should give them that opportunity.

With regard to the standard termination clauses, the agreement and so on, if we want to talk about those in general, then I do not think there is any difficulty, but to get into specific dollars may very well, and is most likely an invasion of personal privacy. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This letter does not get into specific dollars. It talks about salary ranges and it talks about discretionary benefits. Could I distribute that to all Members of the House and witnesses?

Mr. Bell, was the letter you are referring to provided in confidence? Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No, indeed, there is no confidential stamped on the letter. It was simply from the Premier to Charles Dent, the chair of the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight. He was sharing this information with Members of AOC. There is nothing stamped confidential on it.

Mr. Dent, would the committee have any difficulty with this letter being circulated? Mr. Dent.

Mr. Chairman, all Members of AOC have already received copies of the letter that Mr. Bell is referring to, and as Mr. Bell has said, the Premier says in the letter the information that is released is not subject to privacy conditions, so I do not see why there would be any objections to the circulation of the letter. Thank you.

Mr. Bell, you can proceed to circulate the letter. Mr. Bell.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have some questions about the original contracting process. I guess my first question for the Minister, were the two former staff positions that form the bulk of the money that we are talking about, were these two positions employed pursuant to written contracts?

Thank you, Mr. Bell. Mr. Handley.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, they each had a contract.

Thank you, Mr. Handley. Mr. Bell.