Question.
Question has been called. Bill 22 has had second reading and is deemed ready for third reading.
---Carried
Mr. Miltenberger.
Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the honourable Member for Monfwi, that Bill 23, Supplementary Appropriation Act (Operations Expenditures), No. 4, 2013-2014, be read for the second time.
This bill makes supplementary appropriations for operations expenditures for the Government of the Northwest Territories for the 2013-2014 fiscal year. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The motion is in order. To the principle of the bill.
Question.
Question has been called. Bill 23 has had second reading and is deemed ready for third reading.
---Carried
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Item 20, consideration in Committee of the Whole of bills and other matters, with Mrs. Groenewegen in the chair.
I would like to call Committee of the Whole to order. What is the wish of the committee today? Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Madam Chair. We would like to consider Committee Report 3-17(5), the report on the review of Bills 1, 2, 3 and other devolution legislation and, if we have time, Bills 10, 11 and 14.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you. We will proceed with that after a brief break. Thank you.
---SHORT RECESS
I’d like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. The report of the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning, the Report of Bills 1, 2, 3 and Other Legislation to Implement Devolution of Lands and Resources Responsibility to the GNWT has already been read into the record. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Are we doing comments or are we going right to the motion?
If you’d like to do general comments, please. I thought… Yes, general comments. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I just thought there might be some Members who might like to make a few comments on the process and so on.
The report lays out pretty well, I think, and in a fair bit of detail the process we had to follow. Bills 1, 2 and 3 followed our normal process. They were read in the House to second reading and then referred to committee, and committee held a public hearing and asked for comment from the public, then held a public hearing and then reported it back to the House as ready for third reading.
But the other seven bills, the process has been kind of hijacked, I guess, is the best way of putting it. We didn’t do it willingly, I guess. It’s a matter of time. We didn’t have the time in which we could properly consider these other bills; we didn’t have time to refer them to committee; we didn’t have time for public consultation. We agreed, as committee, that we would have these bills go directly into Committee of the Whole and bypass the consideration by committee at that stage.
I think the major concern for me, and I think for committee as well, and I think it’s expressed in the report, is that even though these are mirror bills, there is an interest on the part of the public and there is an interest on the part of Members to look at the NWT bills and to determine whether or not there are some gaps in these bills, whether or not there are some statements in these bills that maybe we don’t agree with from a territorial perspective. They may work in a federal perspective, but if they’re going to be ours, do we totally agree with what’s in this legislation? Not to change it at this point but to have some things on the record so that in future, when we are looking at the legislation, we can go back and say, well, in 2014 we did have representation from various people who said this is not quite what we want in legislation, this is not quite what we want in this piece of this legislation and we then have a bit of a base on which to start and look at changes to the legislation.
The fact that we couldn’t do that while we’re considering the bills is a bit of a concern. There is a recommendation in the report, in a motion that I will read shortly, that specifically recommends that we have a very public review and a very broad review across the territory for all these pieces of legislation, which we haven’t been able to review as a comment. We can’t do that until after April 1st. But as of April 1st when the bills become ours, we can then start the process of reviewing them in consultation with the public and come up with some potential amendments.
I don’t know, Madam Chair, if you want me to read this motion now, or if we go to other comments from people.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. General comments. Mr. Dolynny.
Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify a little bit. Some Members have already asked me, what was the intent of the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning to read this report into the House? What merit will it perform? I think it says it and summarizes it best: the process itself, the reviewing process and the implementation of these 10 devolution bills was very unusual. To accept mirror legislation typically isn’t something of a norm. A lot of the processes that normally go into bill legislations – consultation, line-by-line, clause-by-clause – were somewhat triturated for ease of providing these acts in a timely fashion for a deadline date.
Committee felt that because there were some constraints by the committee and we also knew there were some constraints by the government that were beyond our control, as was indicated inside the report. So it was important for Members to make sure that that was clear and concise and transparent for the public to understand that we were under a little bit of a different constraint than normal, and that we had very challenging limits to work towards and trying to get April 1st as the agenda deadline for the devolution implementation.
So we did our best to scrutinize the bills and to seek as much public input to, what we said, the greatest extent possible, and we did get a number of submissions. A number of Members were able to gather, collect. All this information was meant as setting the expectation of what is to move on a forward basis. It was important for Members to make sure that point was valid and brought forward, and hopefully by this whole exercise that we actually are creating a baseline of information so that whether we review this within the life of the 17th Assembly or we’re doing this for ease and operation of Members for the 18th Assembly, we felt it was our due diligence to provide that type of information, that type of feedback at the moment, the moment when these bills came into our being that these bills came into, I guess, our jurisdiction for review, and we felt that this was the best course of action to undertake, given the very unique circumstances of the House. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. General comments. Ms. Bisaro.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Premier initiate a broad and thorough public review of all devolution-related legislation as soon as it is within the jurisdiction of the Government of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question is being called. The motion is carried.
---Carried
Thank you. Does the committee agree that we have concluded consideration of Committee Report 3-17(5)?
Agreed.
Agreed. Thank you. We’re moving on to Bill 10. Could I ask the Minister responsible to please provide us with his opening remarks. Premier McLeod.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 10, Northwest Territories Lands Act. The passage of this legislation is an important step towards implementing the Northwest Territories Lands and Resources Devolution Agreement.
The Northwest Territories Lands Act is a mirror of the federal Territorial Lands Act, which Canada will make inapplicable on Territorial lands on April 1, 2014.
Under the Devolution Agreement, the GNWT is committed to “substantially mirror” Canada’s legislation that is repealed or made inapplicable to public lands transferring to the GNWT through devolution.
The mirroring exercise means that the new GNWT laws will address the same matters, in substantially the same way, as federal laws do now.
The mirroring process also required that the GNWT limit changes to addressing issues such as correcting outdated language and applying GNWT drafting standards.
Mirrored legislation is a practical first step to ensure a continued delivery of services on April 1, 2014. Mirrored legislation also ensures that there are no legislative gaps or overlaps between the GNWT and Canada.
The parties to the Devolution Agreement entered into a Protocol for Review of Devolution Legislation. Under this protocol, all parties have been able to review and comment on this legislation before it was introduced in the Legislative Assembly. We have considered these comments carefully in preparation of the bill before you.
The Northwest Territories Lands Act will provide the Government of the Northwest Territories with authority related to the disposition and use of land, including the disposition of subsurface minerals.
This legislation will form part of an integrated regulatory system of land and water resource management in the Northwest Territories with the new Waters Act and the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act.
The authorities set out in the Northwest Territories Lands Act will be the responsibility of the new Department of Lands, with the exception of the administration of subsurface minerals which will be administered by the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment.
The bill provides the GNWT with the authority to lease and sell land, and sets out prohibitions on trespass and the unauthorized use of public lands.
Regulations made under the Northwest Territories Lands Act will also govern the issuance of land use permits in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.
I would be pleased to answer any questions Members may have. Thank you.
Thank you, Premier McLeod. I would like to ask the Premier if he would like to bring witnesses into the Chamber.
Yes, I would, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Premier McLeod. Is committee agreed?
Agreed.
I will ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to please escort the witnesses to the table.
Premier McLeod, for the record, please introduce your witnesses.
Thank you, Madam Chair. To my right I have Kelly McLaughlin, director of legislation with the Department of Justice; to my left I have Jamie Fulford, legal counsel with the Department of Justice. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Premier McLeod. General comments. Are there any general comments? Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d say if there was any place we could be generating confusion, this could be it given that we now have two lands acts, once we have this in place, the NWT Lands Act and the Commissioner’s Lands Act. Not only that, but, as I understand it, this legislation, Commissioner’s lands, it reaches out to the Commissioner’s Lands Act, changes it to allow Commissioner’s land to be considered under this NWT Lands Act and vice-versa, it provides for Territorial lands to be considered and regulated under the Commissioner’s Lands Act. How or when this will be happening, I haven’t seen one word about that, or why. I know there is concern in the public that this could be used to actually avoid some of the regulatory visions of the Commissioner’s Lands Act which is stronger in terms of the need to ensure mandatory closure plans and financial security. That is my first point.
I guess related to that, I would say what certainty is provided in terms of mandatory closure plans and financial security requirements are in this act. I know 19.(h) begins a little bit in that direction. What is in the act mandating a closure and reclamation plan for any lands that are leased pursuant to either legislation?
The leases should be a matter of public record. We’ve heard a lot of complaints from the mineral industry, for example. They know they’re working in the area of leaseholders. They know they theoretically have access to that land, but they need to notify leaseholders about that. They’re not able to find out and there are many, many reasons why those working on the land should have access and there should be transparency. This is public land that is leased out. There should be absolute transparency on that. I don’t believe that’s in this act, but maybe I could get confirmation on that or clarification that it is where it is.
The bill contains provisions, 57(3), to allow Cabinet alone to decide to move these lands back and forth between the acts. Why do we need that? I don’t think I’ve seen any reasoning provided for why we would need that and I don’t believe that’s any kind of a mirroring. That’s above and beyond the need to mirror here.
Again, the concern is it would allow Cabinet to allow developers to avoid putting up financial securities or, for example, other more restrictive provisions of one piece of regulation or regulation over another. So it seems to be a questionable authority to ask for, and not in the public interest.
There are two aspects of the NWT Lands Act that would also require public review. I think the details would be in regulations more than legislation itself, but the first is royalty and fees. Again, in order to ensure an adequate and fair return to the public, those should be reviewed. Secondly, the regime to administer mineral rights disposition is free entry, as we’ve discussed before, where mining is considered the best and highest use of the land, despite other users or owners or the inherent value of the land itself. Again, a very problematic situation and I know many other jurisdictions, Ontario and Quebec, our largest jurisdictions come to mind, have changed that free entry system.
So, again, the public review is long overdue and has been called for in the past when it was federal law without any response. I guess I have those comments and questions, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Premier McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess the best way to counter those comments is this is mirrored legislation and we are essentially doing what was done under the federal government. As a government, we have committed to undertake a review of the legislation and, as well, our Aboriginal government partners are very supportive of a review as well. So we’ll be setting up that process in order to respond to the very detailed questions raised by Member Bromley. Through you, Madam Chair, I will ask Jamie Fulford to respond. Thank you.
Thank you, Premier McLeod. Mr. Fulford.
Thank you, Madam Chair. If I could just start with maybe what we can call the land trading provisions in the mirror act. The reason it was thought necessary to do that is that, at least as of April 1st, this act will only apply to lands that come into the administration and control of the GNWT on April 1st or after. So, as the Member correctly pointed out, there are two different land regimes and there are a lot of reasons why you’d want to have a way to coordinate administration of those lands. Maybe if I could give an example. With a community that has a block land transfer with Commissioner’s lands around it, maybe there’s a need to administer lands that are just outside the block land transfer. This would allow Territorial lands to be transferred under the administration of the Commissioner’s Lands Act, so you would have a single regime applying to both lands.
Further on, the intention is not to avoid any requirement of either one of the two acts. I think the Member correctly points out, as well, that there is no express requirement for security to be given under the Territorial Lands Act. That’s a feature of how old this act is. It’s a standard term of leases right now under the Territorial Lands Act that security can be given and there are provisions of remediating the lands essentially after the end of the lease.
Further, maybe I can just point out that in Yukon the same kind of land trading provisions were included in their mirrored lands act for the same reasons. So that was the model that we used for those provisions. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Fulford. Mr. Bromley.
Is there a mandatory requirement for a closure and reclamation plan for any lands that are leased pursuant to either legislation? Thank you.
There certainly isn’t in the Territorial Lands Act. There isn’t a statutory provision that would make that a requirement. Under the Commissioner’s Lands Act, several years ago it was amended to include provisions that speak specifically to security and reclamation. So that is definitely a difference between the two different land management regimes. Thank you.
I guess the obvious question is, to connect the two issues, will land designations be moved back and forth either to ensure that financial security is provided or not and will that mechanism tend to delay merging these two pieces of legislation? I’m hoping the Premier will tell me that, in fact, the review is meant to get these two pieces of legislation merged as quickly as possible, so we don’t have the confusing situation out there. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Premier.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I seem to recall when we were doing this work, there was a call to keep it separate. If other Members of committee want us to put them together, I’m sure they will come out when we do a review. If that comes out of that review, then we’ll do that. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I don’t think that recall is correct. Cabinet came back to us in response to our concerns that there had not been work done to ensure that gaps were filled between the two different pieces of legislation. So it was a Cabinet idea, not a committee idea. Anyway, I guess there was another question and maybe Mr. Fulford was prepared to answer that. Thank you.
Maybe if the Member could repeat the question he’s awaiting an answer for, then we’ll respond to it. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Just on the question of the leasing and that it should be a matter of public record. I think the reasons for that are obvious. Is that provided for in this legislation? Thank you.
Mr. Fulford.
