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And while Hyde has an enlightened view of the role of the press in a democracy, he also had a lot to share on Emancipation Day regarding the state of the country. In one portion of his speech, he spoke about SOE's and that they signal a societal failure. It's the only critical review of the SOE's we've heard from anyone in government, and today we asked him about his words.
Reporter:
"In your Emancipation Day speech you said, let's leave behind a country better than the one we received, we failed thus far, every time we call an SOE to order, we falter. What led you to say these words?"
Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources
"Well if you listened to the entirety of the speech, all 1,050 words of the speech you would find that those 8 words are not as critical as the fact that we are not in a good place in this country and our community is not in a good place and particularly our black communities and that what's happening now really really hurts our grandparents and our parents because they could not have envisioned 50 years ago that we would be in this situation right now. Like I can tell you, whenever I talk to my father, he laments that fact that 50 years ago in the black community, there was so much love and now we are here at this point where we are killing each other wantonly, mercilessly and so the speech was about saying that all of us, in government, outside of government, our families, our schools, our entire community has to take stock of where we are and see what it is we need to do better and see how we can come together because ultimately we're one people, no matter how we look, no matter where we come from, no matter what our names are, no matter who our parents are, we're one people and when one family or one community goes awry, the entire country goes awry and so it's about us taking stock and taking responsibility for where we are and so it is within that context that those 8 words appeared but it's 1,050 words I think."
