Caroline Wawzonek Yellowknife South

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, if a matter is still outstanding as a matter of ongoing legal determination, well, then we can't speak to the matter. I mean, obviously, as representative of the government, we'd be speaking on a matter that has lawyers involved that's before a legal decision maker. It's not appropriate for us to speak about the details. When it comes to this matter being settled, it is quite standard -- industry standard, not necessarily anything do with the government, that there would be confidentiality provisions associated. The confidentiality provisions, really, they benefit all the parties of litigation and, in fact, a lot of times litigants who have put themselves forward don't want their information shared.

You know, Mr. Speaker, I can say that having looked briefly at the list of outstanding litigation, a large number of it is individuals who have claims of past abuse against governments, government agents, government agencies, or who are looking to make those connections, whether that will actually tail back to the government or not. As an example, I suspect that many of those individuals would not want a final settlement detail to be included in public accounting documents.

So that's what makes it difficult for us as ministers to come out and to stand up and to try to detail all of this because they are matters where it's just simply not appropriate to give that kind of information. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.