Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I just want to go back to the point at which this motion was passed and sent to the committee on rules and procedures. We had not been here long enough to find the washrooms and most of us had come in as brand new Members following an unprecedented turnover of incumbent MLAs.
What I and others came in on was a wave of hope for change and increased accountability. There was a feeling among people in the electorate that people in this room were taking too much for granted in terms of their privilege and their position and that it was time for us to re-examine that and consider whether our code of conduct was effective in managing our conduct. That was the context for us taking this job on.
What we have done through the comprehensive deliberations that my colleague, the honourable Member for Frame Lake, described is to strengthen the code of conduct with recommendations that will make it more meaningful and more enforceable. It also provides clarity around measures that are not clear at this time, or which could be strengthened if they were more clear. In other cases, we made recommendations to make the provisions of the code of conduct more specific so that Members are left not only to their own devices to interpret how they should behave, but to have specific guidance available to them. It also closes some holes that were opened by Members in previous Assemblies. A couple of recommendations deal with historic problems. They don't revisit these historic problems, but they acknowledge that they were there and they make recommendations to prevent them from reoccurring.
In short, Mr. Chair, it is my interpretation that we are taking steps to move this House from a collection of old boys who operate according to their own standards and to professionalize the whole enterprise and to bring the standard of conduct up to that which is regulated and enjoyed in other professions. There is going to be, if we adopt these recommendations, an end to any "nudge, nudge, wink, wink, you don't say about this, and I won't say about that." It will make our conduct more professional and, most importantly to me and to the people who elected me, more accountable. Thank you, Mr. Chair.