Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends, to the extent it is possible before the dissolution of the 18th Assembly and for the public record, that the government provide a response to these recommendations, even of a preliminary nature, that committee may publicly disclose. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. There is a motion on the floor. To the motion.
Question.
Is the motion distributed? The motion has not been distributed. It will be distributed. The motion has been distributed. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed?
---Carried
Thank you, committee. Does committee agree that this concludes our consideration of Committee Report 31-18(3)?
Agreed.
Thank you, committee. Consideration of Committee Report 31-18(3) is now concluded. Committee, we have agreed to next consider Bill 46, Public Land Act. I will turn to the Minister responsible for the bill to provide opening comments. Minister Sebert.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am here to present Bill 46, Public Land Act. The purpose of the bill to is establish the rules for creating and transferring interest in public land from one party to another.
Bill 46 seeks to harmonize the two existing public land administration regimes under the Northwest Territories Lands Act and the Commissioner's Land Act. This bill addresses the technical and administrative inconsistencies between the acts and consolidates them into a single legislative foundation. Public land administration cuts across all sectors and all regions. This harmonization allows us to better serve our residents, attract investment, and diversify our economy.
Bill 46 addresses the administration of public land through:
issuing and administering leases for a range of uses such as residences, cabins, agriculture, and small businesses;
setting aside public land through government reserves or land withdrawals to support public infrastructure development, land claim negotiations, and protected areas;
administering quarry and mineral resources; and
inspections and compliance programs to prevent public liabilities.
Bill 46 is the result of careful work and broad engagement and is an important first step to help improve land administration in the Northwest Territories. Northerners need to have a consistent legislative base for public land administration to evolve and respond to local needs.
I would like to thank Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment for their thorough review of the bill. I would also like to thank our respective officials for their collaboration to find mutually agreeable solutions that have enhanced and improved the bill. I am prepared to answer any questions Members may have. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Does the chair of the standing committee that reviewed the bill have any general comments? I see none, so I will ask the Minister to take his place at the witness table. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber. Maybe my mic was not on. Minister, can you please introduce your witnesses for the record.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. To my left is Willard Hagen, deputy minister of Lands; to my right, Melissa Bard, manager, legislation, Lands; and, to her right, Christina Brownlee, legislative counsel, Justice. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. I will open the floor to general comments on the bill, beginning with Mr. Testart.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I want to take the opportunity to say how delighted I am to see the legislation that came forward, the final form of this legislation. Earlier, when we were consulting with the government on how best to bring about changes to our land acts, there was a lot of back and forth between the standing committee and the government, and one of the strong desires of committee was to get a move on with amalgamating the acts into a single piece of legislation. This is something that has eluded the Yukon, for example, for more than 10 years, and committee felt very strongly it could be done, and the government has done it, and they deserve to be commended for that approach.
Now, it's not perfect, and I think there are some other improvements that can be sought, but it's a very good start. From the public's perspective on our consultations on this bill, most of the issues that Northerners have with land access and land tenure are largely confined to policy decisions rather than things that can be addressed in the legislation, so I think this legislation puts the department and the government on solid footing to better administer the public land of the Northwest Territories and to start resolving some of these entrenched policy issues that have held back economic development in local communities, that have created uncertainty and confusion in untenured land, and we can finally start to move forward and abandon the piecemeal approach we have taken to resolving some of these land issues in the past.
I was very pleased to work with the government and to find the Minister and his staff open to considering the viewpoints of committee and ultimately working together on consensual amendments to improve the bill. There are a few issues that will come up, but largely this has been an excellent process. Again, I think it took a lot to move this bill into one piece of legislation. They said it could not be done, and then they found out a way to do it, so kudos to the Minister and the Department of Lands and to our support staff, as well, on the committee end. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. General comments. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't want to add too much to the previous speaker, except to say that this is going to be a bill that is going to do a lot of good work as it relates to streamlining the administration of lands, which I think we all want that goal and we have all strived to reach that. It has been a very big challenge since devolution to run off two different land acts and try to administer those acts, so I think the effort to unify them and bring them together under one act was the right move to do at the end of the day.
However, I just want to identify that this does not erase a number of land issues that are still out there. It was an eye opener and an experience for committee to travel to the communities, which we did, and to hear what many stakeholders had to say as it related to lands and the challenges they have been having with lands. It did not seem to matter what jurisdiction we were in. In some instances, whether it was in settled claim areas or whether it was in municipal areas or whether it was in small communities, there is a variety of land use challenges out there that I think we have to be very aware of and have to do a really good job of overcoming those challenges.
We are starting to do some of the good work to overcome those challenges, but I think one of those key challenges is just about becoming more effective communicators as it relates to land uses and land use planning and trying to build some continuity and consistency around land use so that no matter where you are in the territory, recognizing that circumstances are different in each area, but that we need to get past this idea that where one land use might have been granted a certain way or means of being able to do things one way and then granting a way or a means to do something in another jurisdiction and, in some instances, not by even the right authority. So we want to make sure that we are doing good work in terms of first of all identifying and realizing that there are a number of lands use issues and then working towards getting over those challenges and communicating them effectively. This amalgamation of land acts and putting forward the Public Land Act is a very positive step forward in doing that, so I want to commend the department and everybody who worked on and contributed to this act to get it to where it is today. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Further? Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have three specific things I guess I would like to raise with the Minister. We heard from Indigenous governments that this is a bill that was not developed collaboratively; there was no co-development process for it. I just would like an explanation from the Minister as to why that did not happen with this bill. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Minister.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. As has been mentioned in some of the comments that we have already heard, this was the bringing together of two pieces of legislation. Originally, the original plan Members will recall was to amend both acts, so, after hearing from respondents, we considered merging the two acts, so really this is a combination and an improvement of the two acts. I am also informed that IGCS specifically asked for minimal engagement on the bill, including no technical working group. The new act did not create any new authorities and dealt only with administrative and technical barriers to consistent land administration. I mean this is not a bill, an act, that is breaking new ground. There may be improvements in the future. I am sure I will hear about that. I listened seriously to the recommendations that committee brought forward. Yes, so this does represent an improvement on what we had before. Is it perfect? No, but we needed to move ahead with this.
As I say, at the beginning, we were going to amend both acts. I could not really understand why we could not put it all together in one, and we did hear through the engagement period, people did tell us, that we should consider, in fact suggested that we consider strongly, having this with one act, which is what we have done. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. Just to get it clearly on the record, this was not a bill that was co-developed in a collaborative manner. I would like to ask the Minister about one issue raised with us around financial security by the Independent Environmental Monitoring Agency. It is my understanding that, with a recent amendment to a water licence for one of the diamond mines, there was an adjustment made to financial security when they wanted to deepen a pit. The company came forward with a financial security which was not accepted by our government, because it dealt with both land and water related matters.
Although, in this case, as I understand it, the additional security was probably less than $1 million, why is this government not accepting financial security that deals with both land and water matters, and does this bill fix that in any way? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Ms. Bard.
The example that is mentioned related to a recent land and water board decision where, in relation to a particular project, there was a barrier in legislation, but not in our legislation, to accepting securities. We cannot alter MVRMA securities through territorial legislation. The MVRMA is federal law, and the land and water boards that it created are federally managed. The barrier in that particular example could not be fixed through an amendment to Bill 46. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. Bard. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. Am I to understand, then, that this is a barrier moving forward, that there may be new developments that happen in the Northwest Territories that require significant financial security, and our government is not going to be in an a position to accept that, and the taxpayers and the environment are going to be at risk? Is that what I am hearing? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Minister Sebert.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't know whether I am in a position to speculate on that possibility. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. Clearly there is a problem, and there don't seem to be any solutions being offered by the Minister in the context of this bill. I guess I am going to have to find other ways to pursue this, maybe on the floor of the House, but I don't think that that leaves our taxpayers or the environment in a very good place.
Can someone from the department or the Minister indicate how the concept of "polluter pays" has actually been incorporated into this bill in any way? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Ms. Bard.
The concept of "polluter pays" is integrated directly into section 87 in the bill. That clause specifically says that the holder of a disposition is responsible for restoration. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I think that we are going to probably have some further discussion of that. I think one of the last committee recommendations in its report was that, of course, the time is going to run out for the Minister to have to respond to committee's recommendations. Given the amount of work that the public put into commenting on this bill, and the amount of work that standing committee spent on reviewing the bill and providing comments and trying to negotiate changes, is the Minister prepared to commit to providing a response to committee's recommendations before the end of this Assembly? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Minister.
In a perfect world, Mr. Chair, I would be able to say yes to that. I just don't know if we have enough time, and that is the problem. There are not many days left. This is an important issue. We want to have a measured, sensible response, and I just don't think we have enough time for the sort of work that is required. Thank you.
Thank you. Just a note that those recommendations are contained in a document that is not before the committee. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I think that that is a problem with the workload that we all have, that some of these bills have not received the kind of consideration that they can and should have had, and I think that this is one in particular that can and should have been improved a lot more than what we see before us because of the amount of work. The public is not going to have any satisfaction that, the recommendations that committee spent a significant amount of time thinking about and putting before the House, that there is even going to be a response to it. Is there anything stopping the Minister or his department from responding to these recommendations after this Assembly is finished and, say, posting them on the department's website? Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Again, those recommendations are contained in a document that is not before the committee, but I will let the Minister respond. Minister.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I suppose that we could do some preliminary high-level work. I just don't want to set up unreasonable expectations. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. General comments to the bill. Mr. O'Reilly.
That's all I have, other than I think that it was unrealistic for committee to have do all of this work and provide quality results for our residents. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. Mr. McNeely. General comments on the bill.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, agree with the statements made by the Yellowknife North Member, and I agree with a lot of the principles of proper land management and the inheritance of authorities' responsibilities from the devolution process in conclusion. Moving forward, considering the elections and so on, are there any plans to do community engagements now that this legislation is looking like it is going to become law and relating that information on to some of the communities that were not on the committee's engagement list? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister.
You heard that committee did travel through several communities and also, too, there were a fair number of submissions made, I understand, from the report that we looked at very briefly earlier. As we proceed with changes, of course, if there changes to be made in the future, there will be consultation if there are changes to this act.
Engagement, yes. I'm sorry; I may have missed part of the question, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Mr. McNeely.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am satisfied with that comment. I was just curious about getting the message out there that these two acts are now one, and what better way to do it than have community engagements with local and regional governments. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. Seeing nothing further, does committee agree that we move to a clause-by-clause review of the bill?
Agreed.
