Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to talk about trust and consensus government. The Prime Minister’s apology yesterday to our aboriginal people for the shameful injustice done to them was entirely appropriate and widely endorsed by Canadians, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike.
It led me to thinking about how this situation could possibly have developed, and this led me to think about this government, our responsibilities and our decisions and, further, the real need for effective consensus government and to consider the challenges we have faced in the short life of the 16th Assembly, both in our internal relationships and
our relationships with our public.
We live in a world of great complexity and information overload but with an increasing capacity of our communities and partners to take on expanded roles and responsibilities. Mistrust can form, from political and management systems within our broad society that shield or even reward deceivers and within which misinformation can be a powerful force. There is no denying increasing levels of mistrust in our political leaders — that’s us. There is an opportunity for this government and this consensus approach to get it right, at least to improve the process and the level of trust we enjoy.
First, to deal with the issue of trust requires transparency, and this House goes some way to providing this. But also we need the ability to monitor ourselves, our performance, to learn from our mistakes and to experiment with new ways. To monitor performance, we need a forum for the three pillars of government, the private sector and the non-profit sector to present and discuss information and perspectives. I note that this requires commitment of support to non-profit sectors to ensure and enable their ability to fulfill their important role.
We also need to learn from our mistakes. Our system is young, still untried and striving to improve in a challenging world. Perhaps something like a small committee of Cabinet and Regular MLAs
could capture the lessons learned along the way and recommend adaptation to it.
Finally, we need to experiment, to try new approaches and new bodies within ourselves to incorporate our learning. Consensus government is both an opportunity and a challenge. Let’s be sure to engage with both its form and its content to foster increasing trust and innovative…