Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to add, I have to thank the Minister for even allowing us to even have this communications protocol discussed here, because I understand at the beginning we weren't even going to have a look at it. We had to work with the Minister to get to this point.
I go back to the original point and I am not going to belabour it too much, but I really think this speaks to a lack of agreement between the WCB and the Legislature as to the accountability. Communication is a medium or accountability. I found it interesting in the communications protocol, the board states that they do their research on how departments do their communication. Lo and behold, there is nothing written anywhere. So I am told that they cannot borrow from that, but the fact is we don't have a rule but we have very good convention and understanding. The Minister responsible for the department responds to whatever the Members have to inquire about. We don't have to write a letter, we don't have to write a law, we don't have to have a policy to have regular communication.
I don't know. I feel like we are the North Koreans and South Koreans negotiating the boundaries and you still have to agree on the size of desks and where you are going to sit.
Like Mr. Braden said, communication is an attitude. The communication strategy can't be like we are going to have three meetings a year and if you have any questions by invitation, you are going to wait until that happens. Could it be that WCB make a communication statement saying we are open to informing our stakeholders about what's going on and that we understand that we account to the Legislature because they represent the public? We have a Minister that we have to report to. Whenever called up, we will give briefings. When we have a policy announcement like the chronic pain policy, we will let you know or it's assumed by practice. That's the latest example. When the chronic pain policy was issued and decided in Iqaluit, I got a call from the media saying do you know that WCB made a decision in Iqaluit. Of course I didn't know because we weren't privy to that. We had to read it in the media. When there was a meeting last fall when a lot of information was going back and forth, we were invited to the briefing. That briefing invitation was not asked...If you are going to meet with somebody, you should have the courtesy to ask them, can we meet. A week from now, are you available, are you town? This is so minimal. I can't even believe I have to talk about this. We all got an invitation in our mail box and we were all booked up with other meetings. You said we offered and you didn't show up. There was a briefing in the middle of session about the building idea. I went there and I had to leave because session was on and I was told later that Ms. Lee can't be aware of what she's talking about because she left in the middle of the meeting.
This is such an attitude thing. This protocol continues to do that. It says we are going to decide when we will give the committee members a meeting. In fact, it tells us that MLAs should consult with MLAs from Nunavut. With all due respect, we don't need the WCB telling us how a committee of this House is going to communicate with a Nunavut committee. Somebody at WCB, please get your thinking cap on.
I will pose a question. Sorry. Could the Minister go back and review this and write a statement of spirit that we are open for business, we will communicate and we will communicate as long as it takes for the people to understand what we are doing? Thank you.