Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank everybody who participated in this debate on this motion today, both Members on this side of the House, and thank you to the Cabinet side for also contributing to this by sharing their thoughts on this motion that’s come before us today.

I want to just wrap up. I don’t want to take an extraordinary amount of time. The Members have very loudly put the concerns that have brought about this motion, this drastic motion, being brought to the floor of the House; as some have indicated, “unprecedented” in this history of this government.

Mr. Miltenberger refers to this as a draconian motion. But I just want to remind Mr. Miltenberger that in fact before the House recessed last time, some Members had said oh, we should have had a leadership review at the two-year mark, that would have been somehow better. But I do want to remind Mr. Miltenberger that we on this side of the House brought forward a motion to have a mid-term review within the next six months, but that motion was nayed by Mr. Miltenberger and so that did not proceed. So let’s remember that, now that you’re asking, you nayed on the last day of session when we tried to bring forward something like that.

So here we are with this motion before us today. Some Cabinet Ministers have chosen to refer to the concerns that are being raised here as our personal issues. These are not our personal issues. These are our constituency issues. We put a list of them right in front of the investment in the Deh Cho Bridge, in supplementary health care, to the board reform. I mean, I went through them all yesterday. I’m not going to through them all again. But we have hit a roadblock in terms of our having our voice and our representation of our constituents heard and respected

by this

government. These are not personal issues. These are the issues of the

constituents who sent us here

to represent their interests. And this today -- I’m sorry -- is the absolute frustration felt on this side of the House by a lot of Members. This is not just one or two Members; you’ve heard it. And if you didn’t hear it, then you still don’t get it, which we’ve been wondering about for quite some time, whether or not, even when we do communicate and we do try to share, whether Members who are elected get it.

Now, someone used the words whether taking this action and if we were successful in passing a motion, and I think Members have spoken enough that anybody can do the math now and see that this motion probably isn’t going to pass. But if they think that this is about humbling Members on the other side of the House...This isn’t about us. This is about the people we represent. And nobody sitting on that side of the House has a God-given right to be there. You’re just there because we elected you to take that responsibility. This isn’t about somebody being higher or better or, you know, somebody being humbled. We should all be the humble servants of the people that we’re here to represent, and some have been honoured with the confidence of this House to take on special areas of duties and responsibilities on our behalf. And only see it as that, because when we begin to understand it as something different, that’s when we run into difficulty. We are 19 Members. This is consensus government. We are all equals here.

So for myself, Mr. Speaker, this comes down to an issue of leadership. I’ve been listening to everything. I’m going what is the common denominator here for every one of these issues? Whether we’re talking about an individual Cabinet Minister or an individual departmental initiative that comes forward that affects our people, it comes down to the question of leadership.

I don’t know how this Cabinet can honestly function in this environment. There is a dark cloud hanging over this Assembly. I appreciate Mr. Roland, the Premier, sharing his thoughts with us today. It would be easy for us to say well, let’s just go home and hope it gets better. But we’ve been saying that for months. We’ve sat down, we’ve had the heart-to-heart talks. We have gone to the office. I’m

sorry, but there is an issue that cannot be swept under the carpet here, that goes to the leadership and team building over here. I’m sorry, but for me that leadership is not there.

I had high hopes. I thought Premier Roland was an excellent Finance Minister in the last government. As second in command -- I don’t know if the Finance Minister is second in command -- but as a second to Premier Handley, I thought he did an excellent job. But when it came time for him to take the reins, whether it was affected by his personal or family issues or whatever affected it, he was not able to build that team he needed to build over there, and therefore we’ve been coming up against Ministers and initiatives that seem to be happening in random and not with any sense of order and any sense of proper communication and vetting through this side of the House.

So, Mr. Speaker, I’ve been here a long time too, like Premier Roland. Myself, obviously I support the motion. I moved the motion. I appreciate the honest words brought forward by Members on this side of the House. This is not about personalities. I don’t have any magic powers. When I go home to Hay River, I meet with my constituents. I barely have time. We don’t get together. We get together here and I chair the Priorities and Planning committee. I try to bring out the strengths and the thoughts, and we respect each other and try to work together on this side of the House.

Now I see the leadership lacking on that side of the House, and I’m sorry, I think -- and I said this, this morning in my Member’s statement and I’ll say it again -- that the solution to this problem is for the Premier to resign and let somebody else take the job. I’m not going to mince my words here. I’m not known as a person who minces my words.

I listened to every Cabinet Minister over there speak today. I listened to Mr. McLeod, who said that if he failed to communicate, he took responsibility for that. I’m talking about Mr. Bob McLeod. He took responsibility for any parts he had in failing to communicate. In fact, I want to say that Mr. McLeod is one of the Ministers who when you send him an e-mail or ask him a question or send a constituent on to him, he personally answers the communication. I want to tell him today, on the record, how much I appreciate that. I don’t know if it’s something that deputy ministers do or if that’s from his background, but he is a communicator. I mean, sometimes I do give him a hard time about not being a bit more animated in some of his dialogue with us. You know, he even takes that very well, and I like that. I like that about him.

Mr. Michael McLeod...This is the third term that I’ve been in the government with Mr. Michael McLeod. I

think Mr. Michael McLeod would make an excellent Premier. I think he could bring...If you want to talk about going forward in this House, what are we going to do after this motion today? This is my chance to give my personal opinion. I don’t see very many options of somebody here who has not gone or taken sides and said things that you can’t take back. We need somebody that can unify us and bring us together. I see Mr. Michael McLeod as somebody that could do that, that could bring this side of the House and that side of the House and let’s get on with business.

Mr. Michael Miltenberger...Minister Michael Miltenberger is great on the energy stuff and he’s very intelligent, he’s very hard working. He lacks people skills. He annoys people.

---Laughter

He annoys people greatly, including me some days, but I cannot take away from him that he is an extremely intelligent person and a very hardworking person. I think he is very key to this Cabinet and I do applaud him on the budget he brought forward. It is a very good piece of work and we thank him for that.

Ms. Lee: passionate, terrible portfolio, I agree with her. What she said today, I agree with. The supplementary health benefits for seniors was a terrible mistake; I’m sorry. But we’ll continue to fight about that later. But for the most part in terms of being...From my experience, and I know that not all Members share my thoughts, but we do need to focus more on the services to the people in the small communities.