Thank you, Mr. Chair. While I appreciate that we are, you know, have differences of opinion on these -- on anything and right now on this particular proposal to change the rules, the Standing Committee on procedures and privilege -- sorry, other way around. I know, many privileges, one procedure. But carefully considered this referral, and the impetus behind it is there's a rule currently, it is 5.3(3), and it -- under Ministers' statements, and it's any Member may, without notice, move a Minister's statement into Committee of the Whole for discussion immediately following the conclusion of Ministers' statements on the day the statement was delivered in the Assembly. So what that means in plain language is if a Minister makes a statement of, well, whatever they happen to do, but let's say it's a statement of policy that Members may immediately move that statement into Committee of the Whole, which is what we're doing right now, to discuss it at length. Now, the problem with this is there's no requirement for the Minister or witnesses to engage with this, and in practice, what has happened is the statement will come down to Committee of the Whole, Members want to have, you know, a robust discussion around its contents, and it would be one side of the House talking to itself essentially. And the desire of -- the intention of this rule is to allow scrutiny around statements of public policy that are coming forward. It's an ancient rule. You know, it -- and there's -- as the Minister pointed out, my honourable colleagues across the way, as they pointed out, like, there are other ways we get at that now, through standing committee, hearings and things like that. That being said, the idea that, like, this will be a kind of defacto thing, that as soon as a Member says, hey, I want the Minister's statement moved into Committee of the Whole, then it automatically comes here, that witnesses have to be called, that it grinds government to a halt, and wastes all this staff time, like, I think those are overblown because, quite frankly, if Members started to abuse this rule, there's a vote. This thing's not automatic. So, you know, if Cabinet feels or any Members of the House feels that this rule's being abused and it's a waste of -- or an unnecessary use of House time and resources, then vote against it. That's the safeguard. So we're not changing the rules in such a way that they can be abused because there's always a check on them. And, you know, quite frankly, in Committee of the Whole, we can -- I mean, I could move a motion right now and call a witness to come and sit here from the public service if it carries, right, but we'd still have to vote on it, and Cabinet could rightfully say, well, there's no -- you didn't give us any time or head's up so we're not going to -- we don't think that's a good idea, and we're going to vote it down.

So the problem we're trying to fix is this is kind of a vestigial -- this is the appendix. It's a vestigial part of the rules that doesn't have any practical application. So the committee's effort was to give it practical application in a way that would allow for robust debate around areas of public policy. And in this consensus government, the whole point is we talk a lot, and we talk a lot about the issues that are important to our constituents. We have more time as Members in this institution than any other parliamentarian in Canada. Maybe Nunavut is close to ours. But let's say for southern Canada, certainly we have more time than those assemblies and in parliaments. So that's the point here is we're here to talk about the issues, we're here to debate the issues. We're not here to just do government business. You know, there's two sides of this House, and at the end of the day, it's the people we serve, and our constituents want to see us have these debates. They want to see us raise issues on their behalf. They don't want us to just go through, call votes line by line on estimates documents. That's something we're going to do anyway. So I don't see what -- I don't understand the concern because, again, there's a safeguard built in here which is the up or down vote, and if this is ever used as a procedural tactic to filibuster or delay progress in this Assembly, there is a safeguard already built into it. So the effort here is to take, again, a vestigial rule that doesn't have much purpose and give it some new life and allow for more robust and engaging debate about public policy issues. And just because we hear it at standing committee, most of that work's in-camera. We can have public hearings, and people may tune in, but they also -- when we're sitting, the public's attention is on us. The media's attention is on us as well. And sometimes there is a statement of public policy that people want to talk about. And I think that we should leave that option available to the Members to decide how to use it rather than keeping it on the books as it is.

And I might add, even if we don't make this rule change today, there's nothing stopping Members from doing this, you know. And if we need to work -- if Members have this -- the desire for witnesses to be brought in, we can make those motions as well. I just think this would be a better way to do it where it follows fidelity with our process for reviewing estimates and bills rather than having it right now where we have Ministers who make these statements and say basically, you guys can talk about it, I'm just going to sit back, maybe I'll chime in. That's not the intention here. So I really think that we're raising alarms over nothing because, again, if it's -- if there's not a desire to use the rule, then it can be voted down. But the way it stands right now, we should get rid of it or make it useful, and the committee's goal -- the committee decided to try to make it more useful, and I do support that direction. I know that my honourable friend across the way from Hay River South was on that committee as well, and he's heard these submissions as well, so I appreciate what he is saying today, but I do fundamentally disagree. I think we should always err on the side of more debate in this chamber, not less, and we should not be giving way to the voices of our constituents for the business of -- or for the machinery of government. The people should come first, not the process. Thank you, Mr. Chair.