Amanda Vaughan
Northern News Services
Published Friday, September 28, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - An official with the Legislative Assembly has told MLA candidate Bryan Sutherland to remove two video clips of legislative assembly proceedings from his website, which he says were obtained under false pretenses.

Screen shot of the video on Bryan Sutherland's NWT Party website featuring Charles Dent with commentary that Sutherland edited in. Notice the spelling of the nation's capital. - Amanda Vaughan/NNSL Photo

Sutherland is running in Yellowknife Centre, and is an open proponent of party politics in the NWT, as detailed on his web site, titled NWT Party.

The web site promotes the advantages of party politics with brightly colored diagrams, and quotes from such luminaries as Thomas Jefferson and George Bernard Shaw.

In one section, titled "NWT Politics" Sutherland has links to two videos of proceedings from the 15th legislative assembly.

One clip shows Yellowknife Centre incumbent MLA Robert Hawkins speaking about consensus government and the election of a premier, with text comments edited in over the video as Sutherland makes commentary.

The other video shows a debate in the assembly between Kam Lake MLA Dave Ramsay and Charles Dent, minister of Education Culture and Employment.

Sutherland received a letter from legislative assembly clerk Tim Mercer dated Sept. 19, 2007, which states that the use of the video clips is unauthorized, and is also a breach of copyright.

"Pursuant to the provisions of the Copyright Act (Canada), the legislative assembly of the Northwest Territories has copyright in the audio/video record of the proceedings of the legislative assembly," the letter reads.

It also mentions that the rules of the legislative assembly clearly state that access and use of the recordings may only be made available upon permission from the Speaker's office, and that if permission is granted, the recordings are not supposed to be used with "purposeful distortion."

The letter then states that it is clear that Sutherland is in violation of those terms, and gives him two days from receipt of the letter to take the videos down.

"Failure to comply with these instructions could be viewed as a breach of the Parliamentary privilege and may be prosecuted as contempt of legislature," the letter states.

The videos were still being posted on Sutherland's web site as of Wednesday.

When contacted by Yellowknifer, Mercer said that while the legislative assembly was concerned by the addition of text to the first video, their greatest concern was that they believe Sutherland obtained the videos during his employment as Bobby Villeneuve's constituency assistant.

"When he requested that information, he did it because he said his member wanted it, and we provided him with the video in that context," Mercer said.

Mercer did not wish to comment on whether the assembly would be going ahead with the legal action mentioned in the letter, stating that was a decision between himself and the Speaker.

Sutherland did not want to comment on the situation other than to say the following.

"I do not agree with Mr. Mercer's interpretation or application of the rules and have had similar encounters with him in the past," Sutherland wrote in an e-mail to Yellowknifer the day after receiving the letter.

"The videos were recorded from public NWT Legislative broadcasts, and have not been distorted in anyway," Sutherland said, noting that he considers the text added to one of the videos to be "like closed captioning."