Sandy Lee

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I guess the thing I could say to tie these two together is I’m learning more and more, because people are telling me about this, that they are having a lot of administrative studies done and I’m assuming that they were done in public interest, there were some public interest questions that were being sought. There was probably a problem that they were looking to get answers to, and I would hate to see all these reviews being shelved with nothing being done. I’m not interested in knowing private and personal information, but is there any way the Minister could revisit...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is again to the Minister of Justice. I mentioned earlier in my previous question about this internal review, I don’t know if it’s an internal review, but some kind of review that was done on SMCC, and I’m wondering if the Minister can make the findings of that report or the whole report available. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my question today is for the Minister of Justice and it’s in regard to the human resource internal review that’s being held. Mr. Speaker, I accept the Minister’s statement in the House that this review is going on and that we should wait for the report to pursue further questions, and I am prepared to go with that except that I want to be sure that we will have the information from the review to make decisions or if things need to be done. The reason why I am not so sure if that’s going to happen for sure is that I have not had a commitment from the...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak today about the urgency for whistle-blower protection legislation in our jurisdiction.

---Applause

I appreciate, Mr. Speaker, that this was a topic of discussion nationally, prior to the last federal election, but it somehow fell off the federal agenda with the call of the June election. I do not know when this will get back on their agenda, but I don't believe we need to wait around for some other governments to do the job. I believe we need to do this ourselves, and the sooner we deal with it, the better, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I believe I have made my points clear. I think there are items in this bill that I agree with. There are many things that I understand are important and I support them. However, there are a few items that I don’t think are suitable and that is the airport spending and the legal aid clinic. For those reasons, I am going to vote against this and put the government on notice that we expect them to bring things forward when we are meeting and not do everything when we are outside of here. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Applause

Thank you very much. I thought I was being ordered…

---Laughter

…ordered out even before I’ve said anything. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Seeing as this is going to be a recorded vote, I just wanted to state my position on this. I will be voting along with Mr. Braden against this bill in protest for some of the items that are in this bill. Mr. Speaker, I just want to state very strongly that I don’t want to impute motive on anything, but I really think the Members on that side are taking it for granted that we will just pass and we will stamp this supplementary bill because we always have. I don’t...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister’s commitment on the courts division report. With respect to the SMCC review, even if he cannot give us information on what the findings were, could he at least provide us with the information as to why the study was necessary in the first place? Explain what it was about, why they had to do it, who did the study, when it was done and what was done with it, without going into the details. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I understand there was another study done on the Department of Justice and that was a review of court divisions. Could I have that copy available? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to need some help here, because I don’t know if I am supposed to direct my question to the Minister of FMBS or Minister Dent to confirm. I have said in both our meetings with Minister Dent and Minister Roland I don’t believe there were firm commitments that this will be shared. So could I get the Minister to commit today that insofar as is possible, without violating anyone’s private rights, that he will make the findings of the report available to the Members? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I would like to recognize a friend of this House and my partner at Tim Horton’s and still my very favourite MLA, Mr. Tony Whitford. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Laughter

---Applause