Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Sep 24/01) - The political fallout from secretly recording two phone calls to the conflict of interest commissioner may not be over for Jane Groenewegen.
 Premier Kakfwi: Learned too late about second secretly-taped telephone call. |
The health and social services minister resigned her position in July as deputy premier for surreptitiously recording a March 26 conversation with Carol Roberts.
The resignation came in response to mounting political pressure over the recording, which Groenewegen revealed to support a bias allegation she levelled against the conflict commissioner.
The second call was on same tape, which was turned over to a special committee of the legislative assembly investigating the bias allegation and other matters including the circumstances around the secret recordings.
Last week the committee heard that it was the day after he announced Groenewegen's resignation in the legislative assembly that Premier Stephen Kakfwi learned the minister had also secretly recorded a Jan. 5 conversation with the commissioner.
"He came into the office on (July) 25th and he was very angry," recalled Kakfwi's chief of staff Lynda Sorensen. "From somewhere he had learned the (Jan. 5) taping had been done without the conflict commissioner's knowledge."
Kakfwi was asked if his message to the assembly, in which he alluded only to a single recording, would have been any different, had he known of the earlier recording.
"Had I known that in July, probably what I said in the house and what I said to the minister may have been different, I am not sure how different," the premier said.
The commissioner and Groenewegen were the only parties to the Jan. 5 call. A conversation between the commissioner and John Bayly, the March 26 call was recorded from a speakerphone in the premier's office. The commissioner was not aware Groenewegen, executive assistant Sheila Bassi, Sorensen and communications director April Taylor were listening in.
Groenewegen told the committee she made brief mention of the Jan. 5 recording to the premier on July 19. It was a strange setting for passing on such information. Kakfwi was having dinner in a restaurant with his son, nephew and Sorensen. He said the information did not register.
"I sort of tuned in for a moment and sort of tuned back out," Kakfwi recalled. "I was tired and my son was with me and my nephew and they were distracting."
Groenewegen said she did not mention the Jan. 5 recording at a cabinet dinner meeting and a meeting at the premier's home the day before the resignation was announced.
Cabinet has since established a policy that prohibits staff and ministers from recording conversations without the consent of all parties to the conversation.
Marathon session
The committee is to report back to the legislative assembly no later than Oct. 23. In an attempt to meet that deadline the hearing ran for more than 12 hours each day. On Thursday it sat from 9:30 a.m. until 1 a.m.
On Friday and Saturday, Groenewegen's lawyer took aggressive aim at Robert's competence, which Groenewegen earlier said is as much an issue as bias.
In painstaking detail, Sheila Greckol took Roberts through comments she had made in the media and in the recorded phone calls in an attempt to demonstrate Roberts was bias and had released confidential information.
Roberts' lawyer attempted to show Groenewegen was attempting to foist responsibility for properly arranging her business affairs on the commissioner.
Joseph Arvay argued Groenewegen took an adversarial approach to the commissioner after receiving conflict of avoidance advice she did not want to follow.
The hearing wrapped up Saturday afternoon.
Chronology
