Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories engage the public and interested stakeholders during the development of post-devolution legislation and regulations and that a public process is needed for the notification and public comment on regulations. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. The motion is on the floor and has been distributed. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have seen the committee try to make different attempts at getting something like this into legislation in recent weeks. We can't ignore that this is something that we have heard from the public at large, so this isn't about the committee's opportunity to go out and do public hearings. This is about prior to that. It is about the Government of the Northwest Territories engaging the public and allowing a process where they can be notified and that the public can make the necessary comments that they feel that they should.
By the time that we took a number of these pieces of legislation out on the road, we discovered that, quite frankly, there is a lot of public input to be had out there, whether it is from various stakeholders or from NGOs or just members of the public at large. We think that they have a significant contribution to be made and that they should be heard, and this would be a bit of a formalization of allowing them that opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that, should a bill be excluded from a technical working group process, the Minister responsible for the bill advise the appropriate standing committee at the earliest possible opportunity, along with the rationale for the exclusion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. The motion is on the floor and has been distributed. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I know that the reason that this recommendation is here is because, in my opening remarks, I talked about how different departments had different approaches to the co-development of legislation. I am not trying to pick on anybody, but it is on the public record that the Department of Lands did not use a co-drafting process for a variety of reasons, which seemed to point to the lack of capacity of the Indigenous governments to deal with that bill, in addition to all of the other bills that were brought forward by Cabinet.
It would have been helpful for committee to know that before the bill arrived in the House. Committee didn't know that. We had to go and dig it out. I think that this is just in keeping with what should be a principle of consensus government, no surprises, that committee is advised when a bill skips through the co-development process. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that, when legislation is being developed using a technical working group, the appropriate standing committee work with the appropriate Minister to establish an agreed-upon way of keeping the committee informed of progress, key issues, and a way to have input into significant policy discussions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. The motion is on the floor and has been distributed. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Largely what this is about is having some more committee involvement in the earlier processes so that, when the job of doing the actual review of committee, when we take these kinds of bills out on the road, we have a better understanding of how we got that far in the process.
What we discovered often, when we were out there on the road, was that we were hearing from folks where they were expecting, maybe, some degree of clarification from us, where we had little or no information in many instances to be able to inform them.
We feel that there are many circumstances where earlier collaboration and better communication between ourselves and the Minister, and potentially the technical working group, would have been a much more streamlined line of communication between ourselves. We could have avoided a lot of concerns, and we could have been better prepared to answer a number of people's questions as we went through the process. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. Next, we have Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have been thinking a lot about this, and clearly, there needs to be a division between the legislative branch and the executive branches of government. That is how democracies are supposed to work. Someone is supposed to hold the pen, and somebody else is supposed to take it and conduct a review of it.
These are very significant matters with a lot of public interest. A lot of time and effort went into the development of these bills. Through our process here in consensus government, standing committees get legislative proposes that outline general subject matter so that we can try to work together, or at least understand what is coming through. Some of these were very large, complex pieces of legislation, and I think that it was very difficult for committee to understand the policy discussion and policy decisions that had gone into the drafting and the bill as it arrived on our desk for review.
Much earlier in the process, when committee had raised some concerns and issue about some of the bills that came through, the kinds of responses that we got weren't very helpful. Things like, "Well, we'll take it to the technical working group," or "We'll take it to the Indigenous governments to see what they think." That's great, but I want to know what the Cabinet position is. What is Cabinet going to take to the table in discussing and negotiating this, and should Regular MLAs or the standing committees actually have any kind of role in that or, at least, an understanding of what some of those issues are, how they played out, and how decisions were arrived at? I am still grappling with how we can do that.
The best thought that committee could come up with is that Ministers and standing committee need to sit down and talk about this before things get completely off the rails. I think that what happened last night is an example of when things do go off the rails.
This is an effort to try to ensure that committees are kept at least informed of what is going on and are in a better position to help review the bill and provide constructive feedback and so on. That probably needs to be worked out, maybe, on a case-by-case basis. I think that it worked better with some of the bills than others, and I think that this is an effort to suggest that, if there's an understanding at the beginning of the process, that is going to be better for everybody. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that, should any portion of a bill require federal concurrence, a statement to this effect be included in the legislative proposal; and further, that the relevant clauses be identified at the time of introduction to the appropriate standing committee. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. The motion is on the floor and has been distributed. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Testart.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. My colleagues and I were just discussing who should speak to this, because this was an issue that occurred in our review of the Petroleum Resources Act. I think that this is a really important consideration, because all committees are bound by certain rules when it comes to amending legislation.
Over our time in the 18th Assembly, I think that committee Members have become very well-versed in those rules, what is admissible, what is not admissible, what is in the scope of the bill, how much it can change, and how much it cannot change. That is really useful in our review, especially when you combine that with the public process, because what the public tells you, their aspirations and desires may not be compatible with the formal rules of amendments, so you have to find workarounds. Typically, committees do that by way of recommendation, but it is, of course, more satisfying when those changes can actually occur in the bill.
Getting to the matter at hand, what we found with this curious situation is that there are certain federal approvals that have to come with changes to this piece of legislation, and we found that very late in the day. Although it doesn't directly impact the privileges of the committee to review legislation and bring about changes, it is a significant consideration, and committee Members can feel flat-footed if this is not an upfront fact for committee to keep in mind. Again, committee Members, at this point when we were reviewing these bills, were very familiar with the rules of amendment. This is when we weren't, and it immediately arose the question of, does this infringe on privilege? I don't think that that is the case at this point, but it is just helpful to know that.
Any time federal approval is sought, it should be in close collaboration with the standing committee. If there are consensual amendments that are going forward, they can then be brought to the federal government's attention. That is a far smoother process than just saying, "No, we can't change the bill," and then at least committee knows what the problem areas are that require federal concurrence, and we can work in that environment.
This just clarifies a problem that we found, and it may occur again if there are further improvements brought to the Petroleum Resources Act and other bills that are bound by federal statute, and most assuredly, those changes will come in the future. This is, I think, a very important motion for peace, order, and good government. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Testart. Who else is on the list? Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am still learning about the legislative process, but my understanding was that, when a bill is before committee, Ministers are not supposed to be doing something with the bill. It is standing committee's right and ability to work with the bill and get public input and seek changes. That is what the role of committee is.
With two of the pieces of legislation that were before standing committee, we only found out late in the day that the Minister, while the bill was before committee, had actually gone out and had discussions or their staff had gone and had discussions with the federal government about concurrence with the changes that were contained in the bill.
I am not sure that that is a great way to operate. Number one, if further changes had been made to the bill and required another round of federal concurrence, that's not a great place to be. That is a duplication and waste of effort. I would have thought that the reasonable thing would be to wait until our process is finished as a government, including standing committee review, before you go and get the federal government to look at something.
That just doesn't sound right to me. It's not in the spirit of consensus government. We have this recommendations here to try to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is carried.
---Carried
Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that devolution-related legislation and regulations use consistent terms and definitions. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. To the motion. Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. While we wouldn't necessarily recommend that committees in the future get a lot of legislation put toward them all at one time, what this particular experience did was allowed us the opportunity to make an observation that we maybe wouldn't have otherwise, as it relates to inconsistencies in some of the language, especially in some of these bills. Sometimes there was varying language, even from those departments that sponsored a number of the bills.
It's one thing to see inconsistency from one department to another, but sometimes, when we were on the road with three pieces of legislation from one department, even amongst those pieces you would see some inconsistencies. On occasion, what this would do is have some folks identify to us that what you're proposing, or what we see before us, is not consistent with other pieces of legislation that have already been passed and that are enacted.
Essentially what this is does, to make it short, is it allows us to ask the government on a go-forward basis to make sure that the terms and definitions are consistent. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. To the motion. Mr. O'Reilly.
Thanks, Mr. Chair. Just a few practical examples here to help flesh this out a bit. We had different drafters or departments saying, "You have to say 'website.'" Others said, "You have to use 'the Internet,'" in terms of defining how public registry is to be made publicly available. There were different ways of recognizing and incorporating Indigenous rights into the bills. That is discussed more fully in the committee report on the Public Land Act.
Sometimes, it was a basic, non-derogation clause. Other times, it incorporated the land resources and self-government agreements by definition. In some cases, the co-management was actually incorporated or attempted to be incorporated in various ways. Lots of different approaches, not much consistency. The suggestion here is: next time around, maybe the drafters are working with a set of protocols or guidance to make things more consistent. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? The motion is passed.
---Carried
Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories develop greater consistency in making information public, including looking at how to make the various public registries enacted by law consistent, coherent, and comprehensive. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. To the motion. Mr. O'Reilly.
I am sometimes confused with the Member for Yellowknife North. It is not a bad thing.
What we were getting was different approaches to public registries in different bills. Committee worked hard to try to make more information publicly accessible through the creation of registries. That was at the request of the public and even industry in some cases and Indigenous governments. We have different approaches to registries that have now emerged in some different bills. I guess we had understood that some of the early discussions around the Environmental Rights Act was about having a consistent, government-wide approach to something like registries where our government is making decisions about land, resources, or the environment.
Guess what? Ontario actually has that kind of a system through their Bill of Rights. They have an environmental registry. It is available online. I have looked at it. I have spoken to colleagues in Ontario who use it. They find it very, very helpful. It may actually save our government money. I am looking at our Finance Minister because I know that he is always interested in saving money.
Maybe this is a way to get this more consistent approach and put all of this in a common platform that makes it easier for our public to access this kind of information and maybe save us some money, as well. I think this is a helpful recommendation. I look forward to Cabinet considering this very carefully in the future. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. O'Reilly. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed?
---Carried
Mr. Vanthuyne.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends that for each legislative initiative, the Government of the Northwest Territories consider the need for the inclusion of preamble or purpose statement in the proposed bill and determine whether or not either is warranted, advising the standing committee of its decision and rationale at the legislative proposal stage. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
