Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. I have been pushing for some time for a public review of GNWT's failing climate strategy which is really three separate and uncoordinated programs. These are environment and climate changes' climate change strategic framework, infrastructure's 2030 energy strategy, and finance's carbon tax.

As one of the final gasps during the current phase of the climate crisis, GNWT staff put on a threeday conference attended by about 150 participants in July. I want to give credit for the large gathering as there was a diverse set of interests and participants from all parts of...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I guess I'm just having a bit of difficulty understanding some of the things that I just heard. But, you know, I guess I'm pushing this because the Northwest Territories Association of Communities in their written submission said the following: There should be some sort of acknowledgement of complying with various types of community bylaws including, but not limited to, general plans and zoning bylaws, fire prevention bylaws, tree harvesting bylaws, soil protection bylaws, open air burning bylaws, among others.

So we're only talking about land use planning at this...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I don't want to repeat my opening remarks on the committee report other than to thank the environment and climate change staff and the members of the technical working group for getting us a bill that was much, much better than Bill 44 in the last Assembly and working collaboratively with us.

But one area that I want to explore a bit here, and this was an area that the committee spent I guess a significant amount of time, at least in the early stages of our review, was the application of the bill as drafted. It seems to be a law of general application, and it wasn't...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Well, I guess yeah, I think a lot of this can and should have been fixed before the bill got here. This issue was raised to us in the NGO submission. And I guess I take my job seriously. When people bring forward concerns and issues, I think we really, as MLAs, as committees, have a duty to try to find solutions. So the issue was brought forward to us. I'm trying to do my job. And, you know, I regret that we have to spend this amount of time but I still think that this is an important public debate, and that's one of the reasons why I got elected and came here to...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I just want to respond to a couple items I heard there. I believe this is within the purview of the legislature. Part of our job part of why I got elected was to make sure that this government is more transparent and more accountable moving forward, and that's what I tried to do over eight years.

Plus, I think this is simply responding to some of the concerns and issues we heard as a standing committee about the forest superintendent having some new authority but no duty to do any of it. So how do we know if the forest superintendent's actually doing these things...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I just want to get into perhaps the weeds a bit here but I guess when the bill was being developed, the department waited until basically the end of the process to carry out a very abbreviated public engagement period where they put out a summary of a policy intentions document. I think there was about four or five weeks to comment on it. It happened partly over the holiday break. It wasn't a very helpful thing to have happen, quite frankly, in terms of trying to engage the public. So it happened at the end, and it was very short. Some of the work may have been...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. So I don't want to prolong this. I just haven't had any specific identification or identification of a specific authority within here for making regulations about time periods. So I'd like to move the following motion if I may.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that subclause 15.1(1) of Bill 74 be amended by.

(a) adding the following immediately preceding subparagraph (a)(i):

(0.i) any research activities of the Forest Superintendent under paragraph 15(3)(b),

(b) deleting "; and" at the end of the English version of subparagraph (a)(iv) and substituting a semicolon; and.

(c) deleting paragraph (b) and substituting the following:

(b) the total number of inspections and investigations conducted under Part 7;

(c) the total number and total amount of fines and other penalties imposed under Part 8; and

(d) any prescribed...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that the chair rise and report progress.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I'd mentioned, and other committee members have mentioned, that we kind of ran out of time at the end. We had met a couple of times with the departmental staff representatives of the technical working group and in the second meeting, we had a good discussion around some amendments that committee had proposed, and those were kind of taken away and some further work was done by the departmental staff, by the technical working group members, and then those were provided to committee. And committee had been at least under the impression that there was still time...