Standing on our own and (inaudible)

In an important statement concerning the practice of oral questions in the House of Commons, the late James Jerome, then-Speaker of the House, said in 1975:

There can be no doubt that the greatest enemy of the Question Period is the Member who offends this most important principle. In putting the original question on any subject, a Member may require an explanatory remark, but there is no reason for such a preamble to exceed one, carefully drawn sentence.'

It is my proposal to ask all Hon. Members to pay close attention to this admonition and to bring them to order if they fail to do so. It bears repeating that the long preamble or long question takes an unfair share of the time, and invariably, in provoking the same kind of response, only compounds the difficulty.

No kidding.

From Thursday's proceedings in the Bow-Wow Parliament, a 308-word "question", followed by a 484-word "answer"; perhaps the most spectacular example yet of how "we are just not going to follow what the Government of Canada does. We are going to stand on our own and (inaudible)":

MR. PARSONS: Notwithstanding the Health Minister’s comments a couple of days ago about the balance, I guess, between the need to inform and disclose information versus the possible negative consequences it might have on litigation, I come back to this issue again: We need to find out what went wrong here to make sure that it does not happen again. That is what this is about. This is not a blame game, and we are not only concerned about civil liability. We do not know, for example, even if there was any criminal responsibility here. That is the point we are missing here, and what government seems not to be acknowledging.

I say to the Minister of Justice again, I asked this question yesterday and I will continue to ask it because I think it is foolhardy and misguided and misdirected of this government not to undertake what is an essential, necessary and obvious judicial inquiry that needs to be done.

We have had inquiries, Minister. When we had an industrial accident at Come By Chance, we did a judicial inquiry because we wanted to know what happened so it would not happen again. When we had the police shootings in this Province by the RNC and by the RCMP, we did a judicial inquiry. We have twenty-four judges on the Provincial Court; they are equipped to do it. It is not costly, it is not time-consuming.
I say again to the Minister of Justice: To ensure that every woman in this Province has the full details of what happened, including the families of the 176 women who have passed away since the details of this have been made public, will you and this government commit to a full judicial inquiry to ensure that all of the information is put on the table and disclosed here? It is absolutely necessary.

PREMIER WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I think everybody in this room is very, very sensitive to the issues involved here. I think everybody in this room, on both sides of the House, want to have the answers, want to have all the answers. I think that is very, very important. In the interest of openness, it is extremely important that this be done properly.

This government is certainly prepared to do a review in order to find the information. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, but most importantly the people who are affected here - the patients, the people who have suffered, their families - they all need to know the answers.

It is a very sensitive issue and a very delicate issue, and there are issues of confidentiality of information here that are very important because it is a medical matter. On that basis, now, we are seeking advice from the Department of Justice with regard to the best way to go about this, to make sure that this is fully reviewed in a proper manner.

The other thing we want to do is, we want to make sure that we do not create a problem in the Province whereby people lose complete confidence in the health care system because that is unfair to the people of the Province and it is also unfair to medical professionals and people who are in the medical field throughout the Province. So, we do not want to do anything that sort of reflects on everybody in the system in any manner whatsoever, and I think you would agree with me in that perspective.

So, we want to move properly, we want to move carefully, we want to move cautiously, but we will move expeditiously. We will not delay this for any extended period of time. The first step, of course, is what the minister has indicated today, is that we are going to ask Eastern Health immediately, to get out and have a technical briefing so that all the facts are disclosed. When it comes to the legal issues, Eastern Health are on the front line here, and the hon. gentleman opposite knows that. The legal advice came from Eastern Health because it is their issue and that is where the liability rests.

On this side of the House, however, there is a moral responsibility as well that rests with this government, and rests with everybody inside the House. So, we undertake to have a very, very hard look at this. We are going to do something. It is a question of going about it and doing it right, but, at the end of the day, we want to assure people of the Province, particularly the people who have been affected here, that we will get full disclosure and we will get the answers that they require.

It would be nice if the Bow-Wow Parliament had a Speaker of one-tenth the calibre of a Jim Jerome, or, indeed, if it had a Speaker at all.