Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I first learned of the intergovernmental agreement and the co-drafting process, I had some small anxiety about how that process would interact with this institution, but I can safely say, now that I have seen it, it is not incompatible. In fact, it's very much complementary. I would like to ask the Honourable Premier: what feedback on the co-drafting process has he received to date from the GNWT officials who have been working with the Indigenous governments to co-draft legislation? Thank you.
Masi. The Honourable Premier.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What I have been hearing is it's been working quite well. The intergovernmental forum, we are in kind of a push-pull situation, where our Aboriginal government partners are saying that we are having too much legislation or it's going too fast on the one hand and, on the other hand, our colleagues here in this House have been asking for more and more legislation. We are kind of in a unique push-pull situation, where I guess we all have to manage it to get things done.
Perhaps my desire was for a more technical response, but that is a fair point. We do need to work together on this, and we do need to understand the flow of legislation, especially when we have Indigenous governments partnering on this legislation. Many of those governments have come before standing committee in our review of some of these laws and have asked to continue their collaborative role in co-drafting not only the bills, but the regulations arising from these new acts, should they pass. My understanding is that some departments have reached out and started this work of the terms of reference for co-drafting legislation, so I am wondering if the government as a whole will continue this meaningful collaboration and implement policies and procedures to ensure that regulations are co-drafted on all bills respecting alliance and resources or all laws respecting alliance and resources.
As with many things, this has been an evolving process. At one time, government did all of the drafting of legislation, and then we got into settlement of land claims and self-government. In those cases, we had Aboriginal governments that participated in the drafting of legislation. I think it was further advanced where, as a condition of devolution, we agreed to an intergovernmental process whereby we would work with Aboriginal governments that signed on to devolution for specific legislation or, as we called it, "mirror legislation" to develop made-in-the-North legislation.
Also, in specific cases, specific legislation, for example the Wildlife Act, which took about 25 years to develop and bring to fruition, and also Species at Risk, where we started out with consultation, at the end, it involved all of the Aboriginal governments and their lawyers. I think it's still evolving. With a lot of the changes that are happening in the federal government, I think we are also taking a wait-and-see where they are going with a lot of their initiatives, as well.
This is very much a good-news story, and I think the federal government could learn a lot from what this government has put in place. The question remains around this issue of regulations. The last thing I think our partners want to see is kind of an ad hoc approach where some bills have co-development regulations and some bills do not, so can the government commit to creating a common approach to co-development of regulations across this suite of laws and regulations and basically any bill that is co-drafted, that the regulations that come forth have some degree of meaningful engagement with Indigenous partners, and can we standardize that as a policy across government?
It's getting kind of late in the day for this Legislative Assembly. We have been participating with the federal government on the development of their Indigenous rights framework, which we are now aware that that will be pushed back until the next federal government. We are in a situation where we are now doing a review of our Indigenous government relations, and the purpose of this review will be to identify best practices and areas where we can improve our Indigenous relations across the government. Our expectation is that we will complete it before the 18th Assembly, and our expectation is the findings will be made available to the 19th Assembly to further shape and strengthen the Government of the Northwest Territories' Indigenous government relations.
Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Honourable Premier. That is good news, and I look forward to seeing the results of that finding. I still think that we have undertaken a process, and I do not think it's premature to start developing policy around that process that is already under way.
My final question is: many of the IGOs, Indigenous government organizations, that participated in this process shared with the standing committee that, for their engagement to be meaningful, they need to have the capacity to actually engage the legislation that is before them. In many cases, they did not have that capacity and could only focus on one or two bills when there were so many bills to consider. Is the government considering any capacity-strengthening programs to address these concerns?
Yes, we did hear that lack of capacity and requests for more resources very loud and clear. I should point out, as the Member has said, we have been engaged in collaborative legislative development with the Northwest Territories' Indigenous governments as part of the evolution of the devolution-related legislation, and this has included early discussions to inform key elements of legislation and sharing drafts to ensure that their perspectives are understood and incorporated.
Collaborative development, when we are doing that work, we have to remember that, although we work collaboratively with Indigenous governments, we also consult with those same Indigenous governments to ensure that their Aboriginal rights are not being adversely impacted. At the end of the day, the final decisions on NWT legislation rest with this Legislative Assembly, so, with what the Member is suggesting, that is an area that we have to innovate to make it happen. In the past, when we put into effect land claims legislation, we have had to work with the Aboriginal governments who primarily wrote their legislation, and we had to make some special arrangements in this Legislative Assembly so that it would go through. However, we have and will continue to bring to the table the perspective of Indigenous governments in this area. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
