Cory Vanthuyne

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When the 18th Assembly began, we had high hopes for the completion of land rights agreements, enough so that we enshrined the commitment in our mandate.

Mr. Speaker, I have said it several times in this Chamber: many of our priority areas cannot go forward until land rights agreements are resolved. Without them, we cannot move on many areas of economic diversification and growth; our goals in health, social just, and education are delayed; we will be set back in developing tourism, resolving land use questions, and dealing with a whole host of other public matters.

The...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, this is where I spoke a little bit earlier about how sometimes certain parties didn't feel that they were allocated the appropriate time. This is about giving them the necessary time so that they can contribute, and as well as giving them the appropriate resources. Essentially, the motion speaks for itself. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that devolution-related legislation and regulations use consistent terms and definitions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, this is almost a little bit of a part two to the one that we've just passed. This is going to give technical working groups a little bit more certainty. We are of the understanding that technical working groups are being utilized more often. They are being utilized right now as we speak to help draft other bits of legislation that are going to be coming forward in the 19th Assembly. We've identified or believe that this is becoming a standard practice. That's a good thing. What this is going to do is it's going to let the IGOs and the co-drafters have, as I said...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Largely what this is about is having some more committee involvement in the earlier processes so that, when the job of doing the actual review of committee, when we take these kinds of bills out on the road, we have a better understanding of how we got that far in the process.

What we discovered often, when we were out there on the road, was that we were hearing from folks where they were expecting, maybe, some degree of clarification from us, where we had little or no information in many instances to be able to inform them.

We feel that there are many circumstances where...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won't say much more than what has already been shared in terms of what we have heard out there. What this does is it encourages that protocols be set so that we have some degree of consistency in how we are going to approach the co-development and co-drafting of legislation.

As we travelled out on the road, we heard from a number of stakeholders, Indigenous governments, and others that there just didn't seem to be a very consistent approach. Sometimes, there was significant time to make input. There were other times where it seemed that Indigenous groups felt that...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that, should a bill be excluded from a technical working group process, the Minister responsible for the bill advise the appropriate standing committee at the earliest possible opportunity, along with the rationale for the exclusion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. During the course of committee's review of the seven devolution-related bills, we found that each department approached bills in a different way. We also found that, while the bills had some common language, other common concepts were not treated similarly in the bills. Rather than making recommendations in each report, the committee decided to issue an overarching report on the process. The recommendations in this report should be considered extensions of the recommendations found in the reports committee has already presented. With that, Mr. Chair, we have a number of...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories engage the public and interested stakeholders during the development of post-devolution legislation and regulations and that a public process is needed for the notification and public comment on regulations. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Really, this is the real request that we have tried to make of the Minister and the government all along, essentially saying that, you know, it is time that we recognize that, while there might be these one-off circumstances that the department and the Minister might be able to improve upon and help and fix, there are just too many out there that have been identified, time and time again, through the various departments and through the various forms of contracting that we undertake, and that, you know, on numerous occasions in this House, in various forms of statements...