Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was listening very carefully so that I would fully understand what Mr. Roland’s point of order was. I understand he’s saying that I was imputing some motive, obviously something not good, in my line of questioning.
As a Member of this Assembly I have a duty, a right and an obligation to ask questions and bring transparency and accountability to the decisions of
this government. In my line of questioning yesterday with regard to the Inuvik school I was trying to get to the issue of process on this. I have a lot of questions about that project. I still have a lot of questions, and I will pursue more questions.
I’m not a Cabinet Member, so I’m not privy to the processes that would actually take place behind closed doors in the confidentiality of the Cabinet room with respect to a Member declaring a conflict or how they’d be involved. I listened to the deputy minister outline the negotiated contract policy, and he said that would necessarily include a letter of support from community leaders, including MLAs. I then wanted to understand that process better. I did not intend to impute any motive. I still want to clearly understand how this project came about.
It is interesting to me that if the Premier, as an MLA, would provide a letter of support that would be considered by Cabinet. What would follow after that in terms of any kind of protocol or rule is not known to me. I have been in Cabinet, but I wouldn’t recall, because we didn’t deal with a lot of negotiated contracts. That’s not something I knew. So I was asking questions. I was not trying to answer them or impute any motive. Obviously, this was perceived by the Premier, as he’s raising a point of order today.
I guess I will have to leave a few…. I have many questions about this project. Without getting into the detail of that…. I mean, it is the largest capital project in the history of our government. It is my job to ask questions, and I just think it’s the job of the government to defend those decisions and answer those questions clearly.