Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Sep 14/01) - Parts of secretly-recorded telephone conversations relating to the Jane Groenewegen conflict of interest case will be played publicly next week.

Floyd Roland: committee will hear tape for first time when public hears it.

The taped conversations will be at the centre of a three-day hearing that begins Tuesday. The hearing will be overseen by a committee of MLAs appointed to investigate the allegation of bias levelled against conflict of interest commissioner Carol Roberts by Groenewegen, territorial minister of health and social services.

"We all get to hear it at the same time," said Inuvik MLA Floyd Roland, deputy chair of the committee.

The only people known to have heard the entire tape are Groenewegen and her lawyer, clerk of the assembly David Hamilton, legislative law clerk Katherine Peterson and Roberts and her lawyers.

Peterson and Hamilton reviewed the tape to identify portions are relevant to the issues before the committee. Only those portions will be played publicly.

The review may also result in the calling of more witnesses. Peterson said she will decide today whether the premier's chief of staff, Lynda Sorensen, and April Taylor, director of communications for the department of the executive, will face questioning.

So far the witness list includes Groenewegen, Roberts, principal secretary John Bayly, Jack Rowe (who filed the conflict of interest complaint that led to the bias charge) and Lee Selleck, the CBC reporter who broke the story that led to Rowe's conflict complaint.

Roland said the committee is determined to conclude the hearing in the three full days set out for it and meet the Oct. 23 deadline set for its report to the legislative assembly.

"We've gone back once to ask for an extension and we need to produce now," he said.

In addition to the bias allegation, the committee is to determine whether, as Groenewegen has alleged, Roberts misled the committee in earlier written submissions. It is also looking into the circumstances surrounding how the minister recorded a phone call between Roberts and Bayly.

Though she would not be any more specific, Peterson said at least one other conversation will be played.

Groenewegen on July 23 gave up the post of deputy premier as atonement for her role in the secret recording. The Hay River South MLA withdrew her bias allegation five days earlier, but said it was to save taxpayers the considerable expense of seeing it through and reiterated her belief that Roberts' investigation raised a "reasonable apprehension of bias."

The release of Roberts' report, delayed because of the bias allegation, was called "even-handed" by Premier Stephen Kakfwi.

Roberts concluded the minister had violated conflict law by remaining a director of two companies she had a financial interest in, but said the infraction was inadvertent.

Groenewegen suffered no other sanctions.