Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Many promises and commitments were made in the TLC some months ago about being responsive to Members. Most notably, many of the Members, and some of them sitting on the other side of the House, pleaded with their colleagues and told them how hard they’d work for them and they’d be responsive. I’ll acknowledge that sometimes forgetting things is the reality of doing a job and it does happen to all of us whether we want to admit it or not. Often it’s referred to as being human.
There is a certain exception to that. If you’re in Cabinet, you’re expected to rise above those problems and, of course, you have to work around them at the same time. Some of the biggest critics, or I should say often the harshest critics who are now sitting on the other side of the House, have been ignoring some e-mails and questions even by myself. Several Ministers, to put the point even sharper on there, I’ve e-mailed even the Premier, who has had no replies. I’ve e-mailed and even visited the Minister Robert C. McLeod, with no replies, and in one particular occasion I’ve waited three months for a response that I had to remind them the other day. I’ve got an e-mail outstanding 20 days ago that still has no reply.
When you make a commitment in the House to follow up on a particular issue such as the road salt used on Ingraham Trail, that’s been waiting 103 days for that response from the Minister of Transportation. These commitments are not just to us but to our constituents in trying to do the job. If a Minister says in this particular House they’ll follow up on those things, it’s very important. When a Premier or even a Minister decides to ignore your e-mail and chooses not to answer it, that affects our job. How do we do our jobs as MLAs without those types of responses? It makes it very challenging.
We want to work as hard as possible and certainly in a collaborative way, but the challenge before us is to do these things. Later today I’ll be asking the Deputy Premier, who is the first lieutenant of this particular ship we know as the McLeod government, what leadership he will provide at the Cabinet table to ensure that Ministers are responding to Members and their concerns. It is an important duty if they’re in that office that they respond to us, because we’re working for constituents and how do we do that in the absence of the information.
