Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Premier. I would like to ask the Premier a few questions following up on the acceptance of all the devolution legislation that we passed, I guess that we had to accept in the spring. I’d like to, first of all, ask the Premier, in the previous session, and certainly when we were discussing devolution, there was commitment from the Premier that there would be consultation on the devolution legislation that we inherited from the federal government and the three bills that we put forward on our own.
I’d like to ask the Minister, firstly, what has been done since there was something posted quietly on the GNWT website asking for feedback from residents. There’s been little to no publicity around that; that I’m aware of. I’d like to ask the Premier, apart from that, I’d like to get an update on what the government is doing in regards to public consultation on devolution legislation.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Premier, Mr. McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member knows, we have committed to doing a review of the 27 pieces of legislation that were mirrored by this government. We have posted on our website and there have been approximately 500 hits on the website. A number of people have been accessing various pieces of legislation, but as of this date there have been no substantive questions or expressions of any concern of any of the legislation on the website.
Thanks to the Premier for that information. Five hundred hits could simply indicate that somebody’s wondering what’s behind that. I’m a little dismayed that there hasn’t been much response, but then responding to complex legislation on a website is not something that’s easily done.
At one point, several times, I think, in our discussions there was a commitment from the government and from the Premier that Regular Members would be involved in consultations with residents around this devolution legislation. I’d like to ask the Premier, what are the future plans for consultation with residents on devolution legislation?
What was outlined and discussed with committee was that we would put this legislation on the website and at the appropriate time we would gather all of the feedback and issues and concerns that were raised and that we would report back to committee with the intention that where there were areas of concern, we would deal with the specific legislation.
Just to be more specific, there have been 1,709 legislation review website views, 537 of those were on the pages that list the new legislation. Specific sites that were visited were the Oil and Gas Operations Act and the Petroleum Resources Act. They were the most popular, and visitors spent an average of 2.25 minutes reviewing the material. There were also 184 visits to the question and answer and comment page, and I said there were zero questions submitted for response, zero comments submitted for posting, zero requests for additional briefings, zero new written submissions where we’re asking the public to identify what areas of legislation they were concerned with and what changes they would like to see implemented and improved.
Thanks to the Premier for that informative information, but I have to say, it’s pretty hard to comment on complex legislation in two and a half minutes. Goodness knows, the Premier mentioned 27 pieces of legislation, and I am aware that we’re dealing with 10.
To the Premier, I’d like to know, it sounds as though the only plans that were there was that we were going to take comments from the public. It was then going to come back to Regular Members.
I need to specifically ask the Premier, as he, I thought, committed to Regular Members to do this consultation in concert with us, are there plans to go out to the public in person and to publicize it far more than we have already and to do consultation with our residents?
As I have said before, the objective of the review was to encourage the general public to better understand the legislative process associated with devolution, including mirroring and delegation. Also, to have an opportunity to review the devolution legislation and to ask questions of clarification. We also wanted to communicate that the devolve and then evolve process, and we wanted to gather initial public responses, questions and suggestions about current and future devolution legislation and we wanted to provide the general public with an understanding of the legislative processes for amendment of existing bills and development of new legislation. I think we’ve accomplished all of those, and what we want to do, I guess, is we will take all of the information that we’ve received.
Perhaps in view of the lack of response, we could extend the process and start another communications process to appoint people to the legislation. But I guess in my mind, with the fact that there is little or no response, it means that everybody, the public, is happy with the mirrored legislation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I don’t agree with the Premier that no response means that everybody’s happy. I think there’s been a huge lack of publicity about this. I think there also has been an ignoring of the fact that Regular Members and Cabinet wanted to work together on this and that hasn’t happened.
So again I would like to ask the Premier – he’s saying that maybe something will happen – if he will commit to working with the Standing Committee on Priorities and Planning to develop a consultation plan so that residents will have a reasonable and concrete input into devolution legislation problems and changes. Thank you.
The website update and advertising campaign began on May 20, 2014. It was highlighted in the sessional statement of May 28th. This was followed by a news release on May 29th and a very extensive advertising campaign in northern papers. We are planning to start another round of advertising and it’s scheduled to start in early November. As usual and as always, we work very closely with committee on all of these things.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Bromley.
