Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to make a few comments here. I actually won't ask the questions to the Minister of Finance because despite finance being responsible for almost everything under the sun, they are not responsible for the spending of the Legislative Assembly. But we have $800,000 here, and this is largely stemming out of the complaint against the Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh that resulted in a public inquiry which the public figures about how expensive that was, and I guess I would just like to make some comments that, you know, I believe this is only the second time that that has happened. Certainly, it was never this expensive and we, as an Assembly, have to look through back on that process and see how we can change it. I think when we all see this bill, many of us would not have ever headed down that road. There's a couple things that we -- I believe we need to do as an Assembly, through the Speaker and the board of management, is to firstly cap legal costs. The vast majority of this is legal fees. And I don't believe we should have paid so many lawyers so much for that dispute.
Secondly, I think there's some sort of alternative measures or diversion or dispute resolution mechanism needs to be made available so there can be a bit of an off-ramp during this process that is cheaper than a full public inquiry.
And lastly, I think conversation needs to be had, in most jurisdictions the Integrity Commissioner themselves actually holds the inquiry and they can make decisions such as whether it's written submissions, whether it's a full oral hearing, or -- but in our jurisdiction, the Integrity Commissioner just makes an initial finding of whether there's a case to be sent for a public inquiry, which then we have to go find someone to hold it which is a more expensive to add that other step. So I think there's an argument to be made that whoever is the Integrity Commissioner could just do it all at once and we could have a little bit of a contract negotiation with them to make sure it doesn't cost an additional $800,000.
Those are just comments, Madam Chair. And I'll just note that this is not really the Department of Finance's ending, so I don't have any questions. Thank you.