First of all, thank you to all our witnesses for, I think, one of the best panels we've had across the country. It is really informative.
I also want to thank my colleague Ms. Sahota for raising a line of questioning that I think has been very informative, and I want to continue that line of questioning. I mean no disrespect to the other panellists when I focus on Mr. Okalik to continue this line of questioning.
Your territory, along with the NWT, are the only two in Canada that operate a parliamentary system without a party system overlying it. Of course, the parliamentary system—I won't say it was designed, because in a sense nobody designed it—evolved over a period of several hundred years with parties in place. They were a feature from the early 1700s in England and onward. Therefore, we really have very few models to draw upon to see what it would look like if we don't have the government-opposition model, which was how it evolved first in England. Then when it came to Canada, there was an enormous amount of pressure. There was an expectation that you would form into a government and a shadow government, a government and an opposition.
This raises a number of questions. You've dealt with some of them, some of the problems that are associated with not having a party system, such as the difficulty of making promises and not being able to have a platform or a mandate in the sense that we have now outside these two territories.
I want to ask about a different issue that may or may not be a problem. You may have found a resolution to it.
At the federal level and in our provinces, there is an expectation that when the prime minister or premier and the cabinet lose the confidence of the assembly, they are dismissed and an election is called. Is that how things are handled here, or are they handled differently through a replacement of the cabinet, while no election is called?