REGINA - The roller-coaster ride for Saskatchewan cabinet minister Pat Lorje came to a screeching halt Friday when she was kicked out of cabinet for her remarks about a harassment case involving her, one of her former aides and two unmailed birthday cards.

Premier Lorne Calvert said he asked for and received the resignation of Lorje as environment minister. He said comments she made a day earlier were inappropriate given the confidential nature of the case.

"Confidentiality is essential to protect the privacy of individuals involved in workplace complaints - particularly the complainants themselves," said Calvert.

"My view was that in comments made (Thursday), Ms. Lorje went beyond where I believe we should go in public in describing a workplace complaint."

Lorje, 55, later reached by phone, said, "I'm not talking."

The NDP legislature member retains her Saskatoon Southeast seat.

She had actually just returned to cabinet Tuesday after being temporaily suspended while an outside harassment expert investigated the complaint.

The investigator concluded that while Lorje inappropriately touched the face of staff member Pearl Yuzicappi, it was not in a sexual or violent way, clearing the way for Calvert to reinstate her.

Some news reports had described the incident as a slap, but a summary of the report's key findings and recommendations found only that Yuzicappi "received contact to her face by the hand of minister Pat Lorje."

With the matter seemingly put to rest, Lorje told reporters Thursday that she had tapped Yuzicappi on the face in a "soft, gentle and transient fashion" and told her to "smarten up" after Yuzicappi neglected to send a birthday card to Lorje's brother and a joke birthday card to him from his two cats.

When asked to demonstrate her actions on a reporter standing next to her, the minister declined, saying: "I might be tempted to just give him a kiss or something, he's so sweet."

She said she felt badly when Yuzicappi told her she was embarrassed by the touch and that her personal space had been invaded.

The report recommended Yuzicappi be reassigned but she quit instead, saying she would not work for the government. She has declined further comment.

This was not the first brush with controversial and colourful statements by Lorje, a former Saskatoon city councillor and psychologist.

She was once caught calling a lawyer "an unfathomable prick" during a Crown corporation committee meeting, unaware a microphone picked up her words.

At a time when the government was taking it on the chin over the run-down state of the highways, Lorje suggested the back alley behind her home got more traffic anyway.

That remark prompted the opposition to hold a news conference behind her home to count the number of cars.

First elected in 1991 when the NDP was swept to power under former Premier Roy Romanow, she had spent most of her political career on the backbenches until Calvert appointed her to cabinet last year.

While serving as post-secondary education minister, Lorje told a reporter as a student she got by on Kraft Dinner and Spam sandwiches upsetting some students at the University of Saskatchewan who felt she was suggesting they do the same.

She also compared the economic pain of being a student to childbirth.

During the Yuzicappi affair she said she didn't want to become a "poster girl for oppressed politicians" over the incident but conceded she may have to review how she expresses herself and learn not to talk with her hands.

The opposition Saskatchewan Party said Friday that Lorje should never have been in cabinet in the first place.

"Clearly the whole history of Ms. Lorje in the legislature has been one incident after the other," said party house leader Dan D'Autremont.

"I think what it speaks to is the weakness of the backbenches on the government side that the premier had to choose her to be in cabinet."

Excerpts from comments made Thursday to reporters by Saskatchewan Environment Minister Pat Lorje on a harassment complaint against her. The remarks prompted her to quit cabinet Friday at the request of Premier Lorne Calvert:

"I did touch the employee on the face. There is no doubt about that, I did touch her. It was done in a joking and affectionate manner. There were two other people who witnessed the event at the time."

"I would describe the touch as I was told it was described by the (complaint) investigator, which was that the touch was of a soft and gentle tapping fashion, transient in nature."

"There was an issue where I had asked the employee to do something and she had forgotten to do it and I attempted to deal with it in a lighthearted and joking fashion."

"My intent was to clearly encourage her that she did the things that were requested, but I also meant to convey that it was no big deal. It wasn't a huge problem that she had forgotten to put the two envelopes into the mail in the legislature."

"People do a lot of things. I'm not judging her. I felt very, very badly when she said to me that she felt embarrassed because I had touched her on her face. I felt extremely badly about that. This whole month has been a great ordeal. I'm not going to pretend that it hasn't been, but I've learned a lot of lessons from this."