Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is one of the toughest positions as an MLA that I’ve found myself in. We’ve got a lot of issues at play here and it seems that both sides have come to an impasse, which brings us to the motion that is before us today.

I think there was a way out. There was a way that maybe it didn’t have to go this way. Maybe we didn’t have to end up on the floor of the House moving a motion to remove the entire Executive and the Premier. I think that is excessive. For the folks out there it is a drastic, drastic measure. But you know what? Tough times call for tough measures.

When we’re not receiving any information, when Cabinet is making decisions such as the recent loan off the Opportunities Fund, people are asking us questions on the street. People on the street do not differentiate between a Regular Member and a Cabinet Minister. They think -- and my colleague Mr. Menicoche alluded to this -- that we’re privy to the same information that Cabinet is. That’s not always the case. I know Cabinet cannot share every bit of detail and information with Regular Members, but on something as substantive as a

$34 million loan, a risky loan, out of the Opportunities Fund, I believe it’s incumbent upon the leadership of this Territory to share that information with Members.

Now, the policy and the process that allowed that to happen is something else that is very, very suspect.

Again, I don’t understand how two Ministers could show up to a meeting on two consecutive different times over two days and not have one piece of paper, not one single solitary piece of evidence that the $34 million we are putting into that loan out of the Opportunities Fund and putting the public purse at risk was a good thing to do. They came twice, they had no information and that speaks volumes about the way Cabinet takes Regular Members for granted, Mr. Speaker. I personally was offended by that and it’s something that shouldn’t happen. You know, what we need to do, folks, is we need to try to find a way to work together.

I don’t know if Members here have talked about the issue with Premier Roland and the situation he was in before Christmas. My assertion early on, and I told Premier Roland this and I respect Premier Roland, I respect the work that’s done on behalf of the people of the Northwest Territories, but he got himself into a situation that was certainly a conflict of interest. My belief was that he should have resigned and we should have moved on. Nobody in this Territory wants to see us in this House fighting with each other and personally I am getting very, very tired of fighting with Cabinet, you know? I am not going to apologize. I am not going to stand here and apologize for doing my job. That’s what I am here to do. My constituents send me here, they voted for me and they sent me to this House to do my job. I ask questions and to be honest with you, Mr. Speaker, the level of detail on the questions coming out of the government in the 16 months that we’ve been here in the 16th Legislative

Assembly has been poor. Let’s be honest with one another. Oftentimes questions aren’t even answered and I am not sure why that is the case, but it is the case, Mr. Speaker.

Some of this going back and forth in the media, there’s been a lot of discussion in the media. I have been quoted in the media saying maybe the entire Executive Council should come out. I do support the motion, but I do have a tremendous amount of confidence in the skills and the abilities of many of my colleagues over there. We are colleagues, Mr. Speaker, and I respect everybody over there. However, some of them have put themselves in a position where they’ve lost the confidence of the House and a mid-term review would be coming up in October anyway. This is another way to get to

that mid-term review. We aren’t quite there yet, but given the gravity of what’s been going on…

You know, I talked about the loan to Discovery Air; the supplemental health benefits. You know, why the government would go out and cause the angst and the anger out in the community across the Northwest Territories with a shoddy piece of work. Somebody at the Department of Health and Social Services is responsible for that leaving this building, going out across the land in the state that it went out to scare the life out of everybody. People are so scared that they are going to pack up and leave the Northwest Territories, Mr. Speaker. That’s not what this government...The government on one hand says we want to keep people here, we want to trap people here, but then on the other hand they’re slapping seniors in the face and people with chronic medical conditions and they’re not thinking before they do things.

Mr. Speaker, the biggest problem for me, and I‘ve said this in this House before, I am a decision maker. I like to make decisions for a living. That’s why I studied political science. That’s why I got involved in politics. That’s why I like to represent people, my constituents. In order to make a sound decision, you need to have some analysis. You need to have some background information. What I’ve seen far too often from this government is you make your decisions without doing the proper analysis. It goes to board reform, the supplemental health benefit changes. The list goes on and on. We go back to when we were first elected, Mr. Speaker, and we got together as a group of 19 Members. It was shortly thereafter what we talked about, some fundamental issues that were important to Members on this side and Cabinet Ministers. We talked about those things, we put them up on the wall at the Baker Centre. We went away and it wasn’t a month later that the new Cabinet, newly sworn-in Cabinet, seemed to switch directions on us 180 degrees, $135 million in reductions, all these Strategic Initiatives Committees. We had never talked about any of that. What Regular Members wanted or what Members wanted after that election was the government to go out and do the work that was necessary to find out exactly where we were spending the money and which programs and services were working and which weren’t. I know you have a program review office up and running now. I’m looking forward to some of the work that’s going to come out of that, but that’s the kind of thing that as a decision maker, you need to have the information at hand to make decisions. I am not sure what Cabinet is basing their decisions on.

You know, I don’t know if you can lay the entire blame at the feet of Cabinet on this. I think the bureaucracy itself needs to be shaken up, Mr. Speaker, if you will. You know, some of the work

these guys are getting is coming from the bureaucracy that I believe is giving these guys not all the information, not the correct information. You know, we need to take our senior management here in the Northwest Territories to task and that’s the job of the Cabinet and I haven’t seen enough of that, Mr. Speaker. I think that’s another thing we have to get at.

Now in terms of communication, that’s a two-way street and I think Regular Members too, we are part of this as well. The communication goes back and forth. The communication from the Cabinet to the public has been poor. Communication between the Premier’s office hasn’t been what it could be. Now is that an issue of personalities or is it an issue of something else? You know, we have to address those things. If it’s egos, if it’s personalities, we need to sit down…It’s too bad we couldn’t have locked ourselves in a room somewhere and sorted this out. Surely we could have worked something out. I don’t understand why it has to come to a motion on the floor of the House to remove the entire Executive Council and the Premier. It just didn’t need to happen this way, folks. I am personally getting tired of the back and forth. It’s like a soap opera. It doesn’t need to be that way.

Personally, Mr. Speaker, I don’t want to be seen as a guy who tears things apart. I don’ t want to be that guy. I want to be seen as a guy, a person, who can help build things and can help make things better for residents of the Northwest Territories. There are a lot of people out there across the Northwest Territories today who are questioning what we are doing here today. And they have every right to question what we are doing here today, but believe me this wasn’t arrived at just yesterday. This has been working itself up, working itself up. There are a number of issues that brought us here and, Mr. Speaker, I really wish there was another way. Like I said, the Ministers that have my full support and my confidence, you know who you are. Those who don’t, that’s the way it is, Mr. Speaker.

The other thing that has been bothering me lately is the fact that some Cabinet Ministers are saying this motion is based on sheer political ambition and motivation. You’re wrong. It’s not built on that. It’s built on the fact that we want to get a government here for the people by the people and when you’re not listening to us, you’re not listening to the people of the Northwest Territories, folks. That’s why I am here and, you know, it’s not out of political ambition; although I shouldn’t be ashamed if I have some political ambition, and I do. I don’t mind saying that, Mr. Speaker. Like I said, I am not ashamed of it. I don’t think that should be held over my head for standing up for what I know is right and speaking my mind. I will continue to do that. I

will not be intimidated by anybody or be bullied by anybody. My parents taught me to stand up to bullies and that’s what I do, Mr. Speaker. That’s why I support this motion. Thank you.