N.W.T. premier acknowledges secret affair
Northwest Territories Premier Floyd Roland admitted Tuesday that he had kept an intimate relationship with a legislative assembly clerk secret for months.
The written admission from Roland was submitted to an inquiry that began Tuesday morning in Yellowknife, in which a sole adjudicator is determining whether Roland's extramarital affair with Patricia Russell had put him in a conflict of interest.
Adjudicator Ted Hughes is holding hearings all this week, investigating whether Russell, who was then a deputy clerk, communicated information to Roland from the confidential meetings of MLAs' standing committees.
Roland attended but did not speak at Tuesday's hearing, but in a written statement he said the relationship with Russell was kept secret for an unspecified number of months.
With Roland's admission, the inquiry will not have to delve into the details of when and how the relationship began, said Glenn Tait, the lawyer for the adjudicator.
"Because Mr. Roland has admitted, first of all, that there was an intimate relationship; second that it carried on for some months; and three, that it carried on in secret, it's not necessary for us to go any further into that," Tait said Tuesday.
"We have that evidence now in front of us by way of an admission, so we don't need any other evidence with respect to that issue."
This week's hearings will be followed by another weeklong session starting Oct. 5. Lawyers would not say whether Roland or Russell will be expected to testify.
'We have to put this behind us'
"My expectations are that the process will see its way through to conclusion and we'll get a resolution to it," Kam Lake MLA Dave Ramsay, one of six MLAs who filed the conflict of interest complaint against Roland, told CBC News before Tuesday's hearing.
"We've got a lot to do on the behalf of the people of the Northwest Territories, and we have to put this behind us and get on with things," Ramsay added. "It takes up too much time."
In a surprise move last month, Ramsay requested that the inquiry hearings be held in private, out of respect for Roland's former wife and their six children.
Ramsay withdrew his request on Tuesday, when Roland acknowledged the relationship.
Roland confirmed his relationship with Russell to MLAs earlier this year, ending months of rumours and speculation.
"The decision that, when it became public, it was ourselves — myself and the person I'm involved with — we went to the appropriate people and notified [them] of what was happening," Roland told the legislative assembly on Feb. 6, when he and his cabinet survived a no-confidence vote launched by backbench MLAs concerned in part with the premier's secret relationship.
Russell no longer works at the legislative assembly.
Conflict-of-interest commissioner Gerald Gerrand recommended an adjudicator's investigation in May, saying it's reasonable to believe Roland's relationship had compromised his duty to MLAs and the public.
Gerrand's investigation found that the relationship was kept secret for at least two months, during which time Russell was attending confidential meetings of assembly committees.
Could call for resignation
Hughes's findings and conclusions from the hearings could affect Roland's future as premier, a job he's held since 2007.
Tait said that if Roland is found to have been in a conflict of interest, Hughes can recommend penalties ranging from a reprimand to an order that the premier resign.
"He can recommend a reprimand, a fine, he can recommend a suspension, a declaration that the seat of the member is vacant," he said.
But any action that Hughes may recommend would have to be approved by MLAs in the legislative assembly, Tait added.
"He makes the recommendation in his report, which is called the disposition report, and then that report goes to the Speaker of the legislative assembly," he said.
"The Speaker then brings it before the legislative assembly and the legislative assembly votes on it. They vote whether to accept it or not."