Jane Groenewegen

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, without the exact wording, would the Premier share with the House what were the nature of the comments that Mr. Zoe made? Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I will ask a question of the Premier. Is the Premier willing to take responsibility for the conduct of his Cabinet Ministers and remove Mr. Zoe’s portfolios from him in response to this incident which took place, which is very well known in the public? Will the Premier take action?

Thank you. I will ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to escort the Minister’s witnesses in.

Mr. Minister, for the record, would you introduce your witnesses, please?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So what I was hearing earlier today was that this sounds like it was an isolated incident, and Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe this is an isolated incident. I think that this is something that there has been a series of incidents around, and if the Premier, Mr. Speaker, has already warned Mr. Zoe about this, I am not quite sure I understand what the purposes of the "if it ever happens again." What is the purpose of that? Why are we waiting for another incident before we do something? It’s within the Premier’s purview to do something about this. Why isn’t he doing...

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. I would like to ask the Minister if he has witnesses he would like to bring into the Chamber.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as I said in my Member’s statement, it’s a pleasure to have the Grade 6 students from Hay River in the gallery today. I would like to name them if they could just quickly jump up so we can see you. First of all, before we do that, Ginny Groenheyde, one of their teachers and Bob White is one of the teachers. Also from the PA school, Carolyn Carroll and I would also like to recognize my assistant Wendy Morgan who put a lot of work into this. Now for the students: Keisha Kipling, Jaeda Larocque, Ben Corneau, Allee Geade, Madison Sabel, Tanya Maher, Irene...

Thank you. I would like to ask Mr. Roland if he has opening comments.

I call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of the committee? Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am astounded at the Premier’s willingness, given the track record here and given the circumstances; I am still baffled by the one-more-time concept. I don’t know why he would put himself in that kind of exposure. It’s a job. What Mr. Zoe does for this House is a job. We place confidence in people to do certain jobs. Amongst ourselves we say let’s give that person that job. I don’t think he’s doing Mr. Zoe any service by putting this kind of pressure on him. This is not something that somebody has within their own power to change. I think he is putting Mr. Zoe in a...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, just in follow-up to that, the Premier is asking the Members of this House to have confidence along with him that something like this is never going to happen again. Mr. Speaker, we all know that these kinds of issues do not go away by themselves. People struggle with these kinds of things their entire lives. This is not something that you can just wave a magic wand. It takes serious effort, serious commitment and serious work in order to overcome some of these things. We know that. So the Premier is asking us to have confidence in him, but how...