Question's been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? All those abstaining? Motion carried.

---Carried

Thank you. I will go to the Member from Great Slave.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the practice of reporting attendance for additional meetings for which the Member of the Legislative Assembly is not a committee Member be discontinued. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. To the motion.

Question's been called -- I will go to the Member from Frame Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This certainly isn't the most important thing we'll be considering today but I do -- I do -- I just, I reflected on this one a little bit and, personally, I think I would miss this reporting. I think it's something that, yes, it is -- it is a small thing, but I appreciate -- I appreciate us keeping track of what Members are up to and which meetings they're attending. You know, I like just reading the report for myself and saying oh, I attended a bunch of extra meetings and I think it's just -- I get the impression it was put in place for Members who want to show their work, so to speak, and I do understand that it's not necessarily the same as the accountability reporting for the committees that Members are actually appointed to, which is a bit of a different thing. This is just more information for the public, and I just don't see the harm in reporting it. So I am not in favour of this particular motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. To the motion. I will go to the Member from Range Lake.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, Members' attendance is an accountability mechanism to ensure that Members are attending to the duties to which they are elected to perform as Members of the House and to which they're appointed to by the House by way of standing committee. The purpose of those attendance reports is -- again, is squarely an accountability mechanism so constituents and members of the public can see that Members are discharging their duties faithfully to the institution and attending meetings that they're supposed to attend. Additional meetings, I am not sure what accountability mechanism that serves and, to be clear, it doesn't serve any accountability mechanism. There's no requirement to attend additional meetings and certainly attending additional meetings is not an obligation of any Member of the House. It is a privilege that we can attend meetings of the standing committee and participate but not -- certainly not a requirement. I think there's some issues with it as well. I mean, if -- because the other thing too is attending meetings is not a measure of productivity. Just because you attend a meeting doesn't mean you are contributing to that meeting. It doesn't mean that -- you know, you might have just popped in to hear what was going on, maybe you didn't ask questions, whatever, but -- and, certainly with today's -- you know, with our new procedures where there's a lot more remote committee meetings where people can use telepresence equipment to attend, it's easier than ever to attend a committee meeting now. And that's great. It really speeds up our work and lets us meet a lot more often. But it's also easy to get attendance checkmark by clicking into a meeting. And, again, there's nothing wrong with that. And I hope Members continue that practice but, you know, creating a record of that, again it does not demonstrate any real productivity. And even, I might add, the meetings that we're required to attend as Members, an attendance checkmark doesn't indicate productivity as well but it does speak to our obligations to the public and to the House and to the oaths we swore to to take this job seriously. So why are we reporting this? Why are we measuring it when it doesn't serve any accountability purpose?

And I think, unfortunately, often it can skew the public perspective of what Members are -- or of how productive a Member is versus another Member. So if someone has attended, you know, 50 percent more meetings than all the other Members, well, they must be the star performer, Mr. Chair; they must be doing much more work than everyone else. And as I said, that's not true in any measure and also it's not a requirement to attend those meetings.

So I think this -- I am not going to say -- I am not going to suggest it can be abused, but I am certainly going to suggest it doesn't paint a full picture. And it can paint a misleading picture, perhaps, because if there was a Member, let's say, who had a great deal of work in the constituency, made sure they had perfect attendance on all the committees they were supposed to be on but never attended those extra meetings, you know, it does create a disparity between someone else who would. And, of course, it's always easier for Yellowknife Members to attend standing committee meetings typically, so these extra meetings are typically seen, I think, if you look historically, behind the statistics of representatives of the capital. So I've always found this problematic. Again, I am not looking for less accountability, I am just looking for the right accountability. And we've got a lot of obligations as Members. Some have family obligations that make attending every meeting difficult. Others have, again, constituency matters or are engaging, you know, interest groups, stakeholders, lobbyists, whatever, people who are important. Our time is needed in those places. So that, I think, is a good reason to discontinue this practice, to have a fair record of Members' obligations and Members' accountability and stop kind of allowing stats to be padded that aren't all that useful in determining the public's -- or in creating a public record of productivity because there's no way a quantitative number of days missed or attended or extra meetings is going to do that. So for that reason, I support this. I note that the committee supported this as well, and I would hope that my colleagues on the Standing Committee of Privilege and Procedures would join me in supporting this motion as well. Thank you.

Thank you. To the motion. I am going to go to the Premier.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will not be supporting this motion. I don't understand why we are rolling back transparency. You know, it's already happened. It's there. It's something for the public to see. In my experience, as a Regular Member and in the last term, the additional meetings a Member attends really is a good indicator of their work ethic. It shows what their -- it gives an indication of what their understanding of government is. If you attend a lot of meetings of the different committees, you get a good overview of what's going on in government. And, of course, attending -- all that you have to do to get marked as present is walk into the room during a meeting and then you can walk out and you're still marked as having attended that meeting. As far as I know, that's the way it was for the past many years. And so why record any meetings if, you know, we're worried that this doesn't show the extent of what's being done in the meetings?

I think it's also useful for future assemblies. So if there's Regular Members now who are running for Cabinet in the future, the -- you know, new Members could go back and look to see, okay, what has this person done in the past, what sort of stats are there, right. There's nothing really easily accessible like that. So instead of rolling back transparency and just doing the bare minimum, I think that there is value in this. I have found value in this. I found it to be reflective of, you know, work ethic and ability. So I am not in favour of this. I think that, you know, we talked a lot about accountability recently, and this is one of the few ways that there -- one of the few measures of accountability that we have in this Assembly so I'd like to hold on to it. So I will be voting against it. Thanks.

Thank you. I will go to the motion -- I will go to Kam Lake, sorry. Sorry about that. Normally I get all my [indiscernible] on this side of the House. I will go to the Member from Kam Lake. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Yeah, lake at the other end of town. Certainly, Mr. Chair, I feel like, as well, this is a transparency piece. I will not be supporting this motion here. I do appreciate being able to see the activities of MLAs have in the past and have residents raise this to me as well. I do think there are many different ways to evaluate and be able to have conversations around effectiveness but access to that information is certainly key, you know, and effectiveness is certainly up for discussion. Some Members, you know, based on the number of emails they send, the number of motions they give in the House, or the meetings they are required to attend, but certainly making sure that the public has access to this information, I think is important as they make decisions but also be able to have conversations about the people who represent them in this House. Thank you.

Thank you. To the motion. I will go to the Member from Yellowknife South.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, I guess I don't see what harm we're trying to correct here, and my understanding is that attendance is really quite simple now that there's options for online and telephone attendance. So not knowing what harm we're going to correct, I am content with the rules as they are, and I will vote no. Thank you.

Thank you. To the motion. I will go back to the Member from Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Maybe I will start with the last question and then sort of jump into it. What harm are we trying to correct.

Well, I actually -- you know, one of the unfortunate privileges of being the dean of the House is that I was there when they created this rule, and they created the rule because we had Members not going to committee meetings. And that's kind of where it started, which is taking committee attendance because people weren't. Then they struggled with, well, how do they communicate that. And hence we have somewhat a similar version of what we have here today, and that's kind of what happened. And it's true, I think, as the Premier pointed out, we had people even would just walk through the meeting at the start of the meeting and say, I am here, make sure I got my checkmark. And so the Legislative Assembly has always struggled with how to do that, as in how to -- to ensure or sell to the public that, you know, your Members are working or they're being accountable. It's always been a tricky dance. During that time, that was my first term in 2003 to '07, I mean, they struggled with trying to understand is, are we taking -- are we treating people like children by doing this. Are adults making good choices or bad choices and how do we -- you know, how do we deal with that. Well, we got where we got. Then people complained that they went -- because we had people who had -- I often joke but with the term I call it, they had meetingitis. They had to sit on every meeting and delay every meeting and suck the life out of every opportunity to sit in another meeting that they weren't on the committee. And they demanded to tell the public that, oh, I went to every meeting that everyone in -- was on. And, you know, they used it as the boastful position of saying I am the only one doing the real work around here. So that -- when you start saying, what are we trying to fix, it actually turned into sort of the old fashioned, as they often say to conflict of interest, it's the sword and shield approach. So instead of shielding Members in the sense of, like, justifying and protecting them, people use the extra attendance as the sword. And then CBC was reporting about who was not going to extra meetings, and they used that to embarrass Members, even though Members had good attendance, if not perfect attendance, on their meetings and committee requirements, that was still not good enough for the media and it was still not good enough for the public about the extra, extra meetings. So in other words, you were fulfilling your community obligations. You were fulfilling your rule obligations of going to meetings and certainly being that. And I think it's been highlighted already here today -- I don't have to go through which Member. But, I mean, the fact is this has nothing to do with quality of work. This has nothing to do with volume of work. This has everything to do with nothing but bragging that you go to other meetings and saying look at my attendance, it's really good. You know, woohoo, I am all -- you know, I am extra, extra. I need a gold star, Mr. Chairman, or a double gold star. That's all these things turn out to be. Especially the old fashioned ones where you get to scratch and they had funny smells like strawberry, etcetera. So I think what people miss is the fact that this is a tricky process to demonstrate.

Now, at the same time, I want to stress what's changed significantly. Going back to my first Assembly, the 15th Assembly, there was no open meetings in the manner we have. We have a ton of open meetings and people can say -- see not only who's there but who's being productive. I mean, what's it next? Are we going to measure -- create matrix to measure work? And then another matrix to measure how many words we say? And then another matrix about how many motions we pass or don't pass or try to pass? Like, I mean, I think the phrase of accountability is flaunted around about, well, you're not being transparent or accountable. I think it's about the right type of accountability and the right balance of transparency.

You know, like, some -- you know, you could say, well, that Member didn't go to a committee meeting but they're -- you know, they put in this enormous yeoman's effort in being in -- their actually communities that need them at a particular time. I will never criticize a Member who's devoted to their community or constituency and not able to do it. Now, I will be frustrated if we can't have a meeting, yes. But that hasn't been the case. We've always been able to have meetings in some form or not. So I don't see that. And work has changed significantly.

So it's easy for Cabinet to say oh, you know, you need more tracking matrix as a Member, but I never hear any proposal from Cabinet about Cabinet tracking matrix. I mean, how many Cabinet committee meetings are done that are not articulated through these? I brought this up, and it just seems to go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then just disappears.

What about how much time do Cabinet Ministers spend at their office? How many meetings do they have? How do we track that fairly and reasonably? This continues to be a monitoring of this side of the House where one side thinks they're the mature people and the other side has to be the ones we watch extra closely.

I can tell you that I have seen Members maybe not put as much committee time in that I thought might be perfectly responsible, but at the same token as they are incredibly hardworking Members, we don't take into account how many hours people put in at public meetings and constituency meetings and meeting with organizations, etcetera. I mean, even Members I find that sometimes drive me crazy, I still have respect for how much time and energy they put in. I am not going to pick a Member. I mean I could, or two. But I can see people even I don't politically or geo -- or whatever you want to say -- align with. I do respect the fact that they put in extra work doing meetings. Those don't come on the checkmarks.

And so, again, this is so subjective. It's almost like a desperation to say well, we got to make sure we got to come up with another enforceable rule to demonstrate we're coming up with something. And it's just this drama that continues to live on the -- people whining about well, we need more. I think the proof is in the pudding, Mr. Speaker -- or Mr. Chairman.

And so back to, ultimately, these are just -- these stats, you know, may appear -- I don't know who they're useful for. Someone's gonna say, oh, I live and die by these things. But I -- you know, there was no stat -- I am going to not pick on a particular Member. I am just gonna pick a Cabinet Minister out of the hat. They had no attendance record for coming to -- I am looking straight across, and this is not directed at Minister McKay by any means. But he had no previous committee attendance record, but yet he was selected for Cabinet. I mean, there's another there, Minister Kuptana, she had no committee attendance --

-- point of order --

-- And yet they got --

Thank you. I will go to the Member from Hay River North.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Members speaking to a motion must speak to the motion. This is clearly not speaking to the motion. It's pointing out -- I am not sure what's going on here, but we don't really need a debate on this, Mr. Chair. I think it's one you could probably just tell the Member to move on, and we could continue on with our day. Thank you.

Thank you. I will go back to the Member from Yellowknife Centre. To the motion and conclude your remarks. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There's no point of order. The person who just called it -- the Premier called point of order, Mr. Speaker -- was the one who said he uses past attendance to consider. And now he's saying I am giving examples where people had no past attendance for the exact example he spoke to. So, Mr. Speaker, I don't know where he's coming up with this very sunshine perspective of like mis -- I don't know. It's just misinformation, Mr. Speaker, and that's all it is, just to break up the rhythm of the Member. And if he had bit his tongue for two more minutes, I would have been done my time. It's just a waste of committee's time. That's all he's doing.

To the motion.