Kevin O'Reilly

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

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I just find it a little bit ironic that standing committee will get notice now of an agreement being negotiated and then there doesn't seem to be any mechanism or way to have any input into that or oversight, dare I say, or ability to comment, ability to work together, other than at the whim of a Minister. And because I don't I'm not sure where we're going with all this stuff. I'm not afraid of it. I agree with it. I support it.

But I think if we're going to do constitutional development, you should come at it with that perspective and that kind of mindset. And in...

Thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And the Minister has confirmed that the only specific role in here is about getting notice about authorization for a Cabinet Minister to go off and negotiate a shared decisionmaking agreement. But, you know, we're supposed to be a consensus government system, and this is not any regular kind of bill. This is a bill to implement Indigenous rights and has the potential to very significantly change the way the Legislative Assembly operates, the way the legislative agenda's formulated, what happens in committees.

And to exclude Regular MLAs from...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I participated in the review of the bill. And I want to say I support the bill, except for the name change. And the other items in here, though, are good items that are covered here. They are in response to three independent reviews that were done of BDIC. And if I get the dates right, 2013, 2014, 20 I don't know 16 or something, 2018. Anyways, that part of the bill, I don't have any problems with, and I think they're helpful changes that will allow BDIC to do more of what it can and should be doing.

The name change, though, very problematic. And look, I want BDIC...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Look, I've already said that I agree in principle with this, and I will take issue with the Premier's comments. This is not about me trying to exclude Indigenous governments from getting to shared decisionmaking agreements. This is about trying to find out how Regular MLAs can have a say in agreements before they're finalized. And it's about MLAs doing their job. I'm just not prepared to give Cabinet a bank cheque, I guess. So that's what I think this is about. But in any event, Madam Chair, I do want to move to a motion if I could.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I can't let this one go without raising some concerns and issues that I think are well reflected in the report itself. But I like this idea of a statement of consistency for government bills. I think government has the resources, and they can and should be doing this. The difficulty is that the way the bill was drafted is that requirement for a statement of consistency was also imposed on Private Member's bills without any discussion/consultation with this side of the House. And I'll confirm this when the Minister's up in the witness chair when we get to it but just no...

Yeah, thanks. That sound pretty good to me. I would prefer having a little bit more meat on this nonderogation clause, so to speak, that makes sure that, you know, we support the land resources and selfgovernment agreements that have already been negotiated, and there's the ability to add more. So I think this is good language. And it's a little more specific than just section 35 rights. It brings it down to our situation in the Northwest Territories, so. But it includes those so, yeah, I agree with this. I support it. We've done it before, and I think we should do it again. Thanks, Madam...

Yeah, no, thank you for that. Yeah, I think we're not like a lot of the governments that the Premier described that have party systems. This is supposed to be a consensus government. So the way that the bill has been drafted now and I think this was a helpful addition was that, you know, Regular MLAs will now at least get notice if negotiations a Minister's authorized to begin negotiations on a shared decisionmaking agreement. But the only time there's no requirement there's nothing in the bill about what happens with those agreements other than they're going to get published at the end...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. So this is an interesting feature of this bill is that the Cabinet will authorize individual Ministers to go off and negotiate something called shared decisionmaking agreements with Indigenous governments. It's also part of BC's legislation to implement the declaration. I think this that's a good thing. I support it in principle. But I do think that Cabinet dropped the ball in terms of not adopting the approach that BC has of actually making that delegation of authority or at least not providing notice to the public that that's going to happen. What has been added...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I just want to understand. I believe this language comes from is repeated in at least a couple of other pieces of GNWT legislation. And can I ask the law clerk to confirm that for me, please.