Kieron Testart

Those linkages will be established via regulation? Thank you.

Okay. So, again, I'm trying to find a way to ask this question, but fundamentally the committee found a way that was in order, that was acceptable to the legislation. We vetted that with our legal counsel. So this is not out of line with the act; it's out of line with the policy intent of the government, but the committee found this problem. We're not making this up; it's happened. So this is a very fundamentally live issue. If not the committee's amendments, the committee's policy direction that this be resolved, what is the approach of government to this?

I don't want to hear about why it...

Well, we got there. Thank you for the clarification. That is exactly what I was looking for. My next question is: for an unsettled area, where a production licence is sought in an unsettled area, what is the process for that? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am going to try to confine my comments as much as possible to the substance of the report and the committee's experience in reviewing the bill.

Not getting into the substantive merits, flaws, or concerns around the actual piece of legislation, committee's process was, I think, an interesting one, where the steps were taken to collaborate with the sponsoring Minister on how we could find common ground on improvements to the bill, but there were some very hard lines that were established in our process. That kind of intransigence is very difficult to deal with in a system...

Thank you. What does that mean, we need the flexibility? I am unclear on that. I wasn't proposing any changes to this. I was asking: is it a socio-economic agreement? What flexibility is the Minister indicating in his response? Thank you.

Thank you. This is the first time that this information has come forward, so I appreciate learning it. That is why we are asking these questions.

In the case where there is a project that multiple Indigenous organizations and governments have a claim to, do there need to be agreements in place with all of those parties before a production licence is issued? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You know, of the issues that have been raised around protecting public infrastructure, or I shouldn't say that, not protecting public infrastructure, but avoiding conflict when the rights contained in this act impact the infrastructure of municipal public interests, if the government is not content to seek changes in statute, what is their approach? How are we going to resolve this and keep these matters out of the courts and provide certainty beforehand, so they don't end up in the courts? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

For greater clarity, the government will not attempt to bring forward regulations that contradict or add conditions above and beyond what are included in land right agreements? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I seek unanimous consent to move to item 6, recognition of visitors in the gallery, on the orders of the day. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

---Unanimous consent granted

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think that the last speaker was very apt. This is a complicated set of governance in the Northwest Territories. It gets even more complicated when you bring in designated authorities, but I think that the point here is to achieve the consistency that was obtained with the lands act.

I think that land is as significant a management issue as subsurface rights, and to think that we would have municipalities informed of land transfers, but not informed of intended work, really doesn't give them the tools that they need to understand what is going around them. The community...