Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As many Members know, I’m pretty familiar with many of the rules around the House and I can easily say that many of the rules are black and white. But there is area that I often refer to as grey areas and, of course, they’re not tied to a specific rule or a breach, but sometimes more of an error of opinion or insight. Sometimes we can refer to them as someone has gingerly strolled away from the spirit and the intent of consensus government.

I’m having trouble personally putting a specific finger around what rule may have been breached, but I can tell you once I’ve stepped back, like an onion, when you peel it away it starts to make your eyes water and you start to wonder what has truly been revealed.

Pray tell, what am I talking about? Well, guess what. The Minister of Health and Social Services just over a week ago did, in my view, a pre-emptive strike on what was released yesterday tabled by

yourself, the Auditor General’s report. On February 25th he read a Minister’s statement in this House as

innocent as the day and seemed to try to paint the picture of child and family services that things are all okay.

I think this was a result of an effort to downplay the results that were pending. Was there a freight train coming and they thought let’s throw something to put a twist in the tracks?

I draw this House’s attention to the Minister’s statement on page 3 where they refer to procedural manuals, updating, major revisions, and by the way, they’ll be done next year. There are very similar responses of the spirit and intent of what was on chapter 39 of the AG’s report. Did the Minister get ahead of the report? I’m starting to notice a trend. The trend continues on page 4 of his statement. The Minister goes on and talks about detailed training, and the Auditor General report as well talks about training, not just once but on chapter 19, 41, chapter 42 and even 80. Was the Minister trying to get ahead of the report or, as he said on CBC last night, well, there are just a few things they need to tweak, I think he said.

This is a serious moral breach. It’s not a technical breach. There are no rules in our green books to tell us what rule has been broken, but I can tell you, getting ahead of the Auditor General’s report and trying to play it down, I think is a moral breach of the spirit and the intent of consensus government that we live and run every day in this building.

I will continue on this trek of saying, why did he do this? We need to have a serious discussion about the way we do business here.