Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have another amendment I would like to propose. I move that subclause 10(6) of bill 38 be deleted and the following substituted: "(6) The Minister shall make a decision to accept or reject the nomination within 90 days of receiving the nomination," and the Minister shall provide written reasons or a rejection to any nominating Indigenous governments or organizations.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. There is a motion on the floor. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. Yes, I will keep this quite brief. I know our time is getting tight.
The effect of this motion is to remove the Minister's unfettered discretion as it currently reads in 10(6) and also put in a timeline for making a decision of 90 days. We heard one of the Minister's staff talk about how they accepted a decision to be made within months, and I think this just makes sure that we have a timely process by inserting a time frame for doing that. This is becoming common practice in a lot of decision-making, or sorry, a lot of legislation, including the Access to Information, the Protection of Privacy Act, where there are a number of timelines that are set out. There are a bunch of timelines set out as well in the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, so this is just about ensuring a timely decision is made and that the Minister's unfettered discretion is removed. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. To the motion. Mr. Testart.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the idea of legislative timelines is a very good idea, or by regulation, but timelines provide certainty and clarity to the public and to interested parties in this.
In this case, this bill, again, is a bill created for use by governments and not by the public, so it is imperative that we get this nomination period over with as soon as possible so the public process can start and people can be aware of what decisions are being proposed for the shared land of the Northwest Territories.
I think putting a timeline just provides that kind of certainty, and we get beat up all the time as a government for not having regulations that have clarity and certainty, so any attempts to improve that is fine.
That being said, I support this motion in principle, but not in substance, unfortunately, because it really needs to be paired with the preceding motion that was moved by the honourable Member for Frame Lake. This removes the Minister's discretion without creating clear caveats to how that discretion will be guided, so we are in a situation here where there is not enough discretion. I feel like, working together, this would make the bill much stronger, but one of these motions, this motion on its own, I think, is problematic for those reasons. Therefore, although I support it in principle, I will not be supporting the amendment. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Testart. To the motion. Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, the way the legislation is written, if you go to what is being proposed in the act right now, in order for the Minister to reject the nominated area, he or she would have to put it in writing. It doesn't have to be put in writing to accept a nominating committee, so in effect, following this legislation would say that, once the nomination is made and the Minister does not reject it, it is accepted.
This actually puts more restrictions. The new recommendation actually puts more restriction in. Number one, it makes it within 90 days. Number two, it has both accepted and rejected the clause. This clause here, the Minister will only need to act if he is rejecting the nomination. This act here, we will have to put it in writing whether the Minister is accepting or rejecting the nomination, so this one here is less restrictive and would be better for the Indigenous government. If they were to recommend an area that they wish to nominate as a protected area, the Minister would then have to, in order to reject it, have to put it in writing. If the Minister does not write to the Indigenous government, then, by this act, he is actually accepting the nomination area. This has less restriction than what is being proposed, so I will not support the amendment. Thank you.
Thank you. To the motion. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, appreciate the intention of what the mover is presenting here, but I clearly think that the department and the Minister and committee have come a long way. This was originally a clause that really was very limited; a nominated area could sit in the nomination phase for an extended period of time.
I think clause 1.10.1.1, an area nominated under this section shall be considered by the Minister without delay. We went back and forth to even get to that point and felt that that was fairly reasonable.
I think that, when you are discussing the opportunity to nominate an area with an Indigenous government, there is a period of negotiation that goes on. We all know how difficult it can be, and in terms of trying to find time frames for governments to get together to have these reasonable negotiations. I think putting a time constraint on them would either put them in too much a pressure situation to try to find terms, and/or they would end up just saying, "Forget it" and leave it be. That defeats the purpose of the whole entire act, which is to support protected areas.
For those reasons, I won't be supporting the amendment. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. To the motion. Mr. Nakimayak.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I agree with the previous speakers. It is too restrictive. Ninety days, you know, some protected areas take years and years to develop, and sometimes, some land claims are signed and some are not, so there is still a lot of workings that are outside of all of this that are not captured with this amendment. It would be far too restrictive.
You know, sometimes when you rush things like this, it is hard to get hold of an Indigenous government because they are negotiating a lot with Ottawa and other areas, and sometimes advocating for the wildlife. We always want the best outcome when we look at a possible or an area of interest to become eventually a protected area.
I think we are rushing too much. I have always said, even in other forums, you know, everyone comes to our territory and tries to lock up all of this land for conservation areas, not understanding the whole ecosystem of the people who actually live there, and this is an example of that.
For that reason, I am not going to support that, Mr. Chair. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Nakimayak. To the motion. Mr. McNeely.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I can't see myself supporting this motion and the previous one, as well. When I consider the existence of what we have already, we made significant progress in two candidate areas and two areas, one off the land claim settlement area and one within, so you have two examples of a system that is in front of us. It is working, and the staff are proceeding on it as we speak. Now, we are trying to change the system that is working, so I can't see what we are really trying to achieve by placing timelines and restricting the Minister's office from authority to move forward when, in fact, we have two resulting areas that prove that the system is in place, and it is producing results. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. McNeely. Mr. Nadli.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My first real job was doing mapping, doing traditional land use and occupancy mapping with elders and traditional harvesters and storytellers and people, my people, who basically made the land their home. Their land was basically their life.
I have, perhaps, a fairly good understanding of the PAS movement since its inception, how it was drafted out, how it was processed, and so I have observed some of the evolution of the whole initiative. In some ways, I have seen a lot of its failures, and I have seen some of its successes in some respects. At the same time, I think that we have come a long way. The way that I understand this, reminding myself, is that we have Indigenous colleagues who played a hand in working the draft, in terms of laying the foundation of, at least, the spirit and principle of the draft legislation.
A lot of the drafting of the wording, if there was anybody who dotted their i's and crossed their t's, it was working groups who involved governments and Indigenous leaders. There is a presumption that someone did their due diligence and that what we have before us is their efforts. I think that we have done all that we can, but there has to be a level of assurances.
As I have said, one community that I know of worked very hard on protected areas initiatives and waited for approval for at least 10 years, and they are still waiting. I am hoping that what we have crafted together, collaboratively with First Nations and governments, will change that and that will at least lay the foundation for the landscape and environmental and ecological initiatives, so that the land that we want protected will become part of the process, and we will see it through.
I am not prepared to support this amended motion. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Nadli. To the motion. Minister McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We appreciate the input from all of the Members, first and foremost.
ENR is committed to making timely decisions under this act. We have concurred to the motion, and I think that the Member from Yellowknife North spoke to it, adding subclause 10(1). This requires a decision to be made without delay.
Further, the proposed amendment implies that the Minister makes the final decision to accept a nomination. This is not in alignment with section 11(1) of the bill. This section makes the Executive Council the final decision-maker on a nomination on the recommendation of a Minister.
Legislating a 90-day deadline to make a decision and provide a response to the nominating Indigenous government would be challenging. In most cases, this would not be a sufficient period of time to meet processes and, if needed, put interim protection in place. For example, the Minister or Executive Council may want to carry out certain assessments and studies prior to making a decision, and this time frame would not allow for that work.
With that being said, Mr. Chair, we will be voting against the amendment. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Anything further? To the motion. I will allow the mover to close debate. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I recognize that the clock is ticking. I do feel compelled to respond to some of the things that I heard.
I think that I heard the honourable Member for Nunakput say that this amendment is an example of people trying to lock up areas. I want to assure everyone in this Assembly that that is not why I am here. I have lived here for 35 years, almost. I worked for Indigenous governments when I first arrived. I have never said that I speak on behalf of Indigenous governments. I am here to make sure that our government honours the agreements and Indigenous rights as they have already been established. That is why I am here, so I don't accept the honourable Member's imputing motives to me.
This motion is really about creating certainty and timely decisions. It doesn't stop the process in any way. What this does, in fact, is make sure that an area moves outside of the nomination process, that a decision is made, and if it is made to accept it as a nominated area, it gets interim protection. That is an important thing moving forward, that an area will get timely interim protection, and it could go into a process where establishment agreements can be negotiated, everybody can look at the mineral potential, how to set boundaries, how the area would be managed, and so on. It is to get it out of that nomination phase, the phase that my colleague, the honourable Member for Deh Cho, has said has taken years in some cases under the Protected Areas Strategy. This is to try to prevent that from happening.
This is about ensuring a timely decision is made. This does not replace the decision-making authority of the Executive Council, on recommendation of the Minister under 11(1) of the bill, in any stretch of the imagination. This is about ensuring that the Minister makes a timely decision on a nominated area.
