Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories, in collaboration and cooperation with Indigenous governments or organizations, develop and release a clear statement on how it interprets and intends to apply free prior and informed consent. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories, in collaboration and cooperation with Indigenous governments or organizations include, in the action plan developed under section 9 of Bill 85, specific measures to confirm rights, devolve jurisdiction, build institutional capacity, strengthen fiscal autonomy, set service standards, and facilitate nationtonation relationships, among others. This work should refer to the written submission of the First Nations Financial Management Board to committee's review of Bill 85. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Yellowknife North.
Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories should set up a funding framework to support Indigenous governments or organizations' capacity to engage with work to implement the declaration going forward. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, I'm kind of a bit surprised we're just rushing through this because I think there's some pretty significant public policy issues here. And this recommendation, I certainly support because I think there's going to be a lot of work necessary to come up with an action plan to revise policy legislation of this government. And that does require resourcing of some of the Indigenous governments to participate in that process. And then, you know, we get to the stage of actually this won't happen in this Assembly but in the next Assembly and the Assembly after that, individual pieces of legislation are going to have to be reviewed. Policies are going to have to be reviewed. Indigenous governments, not all of them have the capacity to do a lot of that work at probably the pace that some others would like.
So I do support this recommendation. And I guess I also have to express some concern that not all the Indigenous governments were a part of the memorandum of understanding or the working group in developing this legislation. You know, I think Cabinet probably tried to engage everybody but not everybody maybe wanted to or had the capacity to or thought that this was the best use of their resources for whatever reason. But, you know, as I understand it, at least a couple of very significant regional Indigenous governments, Akaitcho and the Deh Cho, were not engaged, not involved in this work to develop the bill. But maybe if there's sufficient resources made available, maybe they would have the ability to participate in the future in the implementation. So I do support this recommendation. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Yellowknife North.
Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends the Government of the Northwest Territories, in consultation with the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight and Indigenous governments or organizations, set up a mechanism that ensures Regular Members can access timely, comprehensive, and detailed information about the action plan committee's work. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks. I can certainly support this. I am concerned about the level of engagement there was with Regular MLAs in the development of the bill. Unfortunately, it all happened behind closed doors so I can't say much, but it certainly didn't meet my expectation. And the bill, I don't think, really reflected, in my opinion, the legislative proposal, which I can't speak to either, was at such a high vague level that the bill I guess didn't really the bill had a lot more in it than I think I'd expected as a result of the legislative proposal, and there's a number of issues that I'm sure we're going to discuss further when we get to the actual the bill itself. But we do have process conventions in place now that allow for information sharing on a confidential basis. And I guess there's been a number of cases in this Assembly where that hasn't happened, and I continue to highlight those.
But moving forward, Cabinet's got to find a better way to do this, especially with this bill because this bill can and probably should change the way we do our business. It will. It'll affect the legislative agenda for the next Assembly and the one after that. It'll affect the policy work, the kind of things that committees are asked to do. A big part of it is going to be related to the implementation of this declaration, and the Regular MLAs can and need to be part of that process. Relying on Cabinet to get information secondhand, in my experience in the last Assembly, in this Assembly, just doesn't work. It doesn't work. And I you know, great if some effort can be put into some kind of a mechanism to share timely, comprehensive, and detailed information on the action plan committee's work, but I don't really I just haven't seen that implemented even in the development of this bill itself. And I'm going to speak to that when we get to the bill itself and at least one other recommendation here. So I can support this, but I think there's a better fix for this and I'm going to be raising that when we get to the bill itself. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstaining? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Yellowknife North.
Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories should, without delay, make all authorizations provided to a Minister to negotiate or enter into a shared decisionmaking agreement under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Implementation Act publicly available by publishing it on a governmentmaintained website. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. So this is an interesting feature of this bill is that the Cabinet will authorize individual Ministers to go off and negotiate something called shared decisionmaking agreements with Indigenous governments. It's also part of BC's legislation to implement the declaration. I think this that's a good thing. I support it in principle. But I do think that Cabinet dropped the ball in terms of not adopting the approach that BC has of actually making that delegation of authority or at least not providing notice to the public that that's going to happen. What has been added to the bill as a result of the committee review is that, you know, the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight basically and its successors, which is basically the Regular MLAs will get that notice. But it's not a public document. The Cabinet, in putting this bill together, completely forgot about the public. And I'm going to talk more about that in my general remarks on the bill itself, but.
So this notice is going to go to the Regular MLAs through the standing committee, but it's not going to be made public. I don't think that's good enough, and I think we need to do a lot more work around public education and how this is going to work. Some of that's just going to roll out as we get into this process. But Cabinet just didn't do a very good job in terms of the public interest, public participation in its own public government sorry, open government policy in preparing this bill. And I'm going to continue to shine a light on that. So great that these agreements are going to be shared publicly after the fact, but I don't think that that's good enough. I think that they should actually be shared publicly before they're finalized so that the public can see what the government's doing. That's what open, transparent, and accountable government's all about. And Cabinet just doesn't seem to want to go there, so I'm quite disappointed. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Yellowknife North.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories provide notice and seek comments from the Standing Committee of Accountability and Oversight before entering into a shared decisionmaking agreement under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Implementation Act. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. So the reason why this recommendation is here is that committee tried to get this included in the bill at the clausebyclause review, and the Minister would not concur. So the fallback position for committee is to try to bring it forward as a recommendation and I guess at the appropriate time when we're in the bill itself, I'll move a motion to try to get back to get it in. Thanks, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Yellowknife North.
Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories in its capacity as a member of the action plan committee, advocate for the action plan committee to choose an independent person or entity to lead the fiveyear review of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Implementation Act. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. The motion is in order. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Member for Yellowknife North.
Madam Chair, I move that this committee recommends that the Government of the Northwest Territories consult the Standing Committee on Accountability and Oversight when developing guidelines for statements of consistency required under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Implementation Act. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Thanks, Madam Chair. I can't let this one go without raising some concerns and issues that I think are well reflected in the report itself. But I like this idea of a statement of consistency for government bills. I think government has the resources, and they can and should be doing this. The difficulty is that the way the bill was drafted is that requirement for a statement of consistency was also imposed on Private Member's bills without any discussion/consultation with this side of the House. And I'll confirm this when the Minister's up in the witness chair when we get to it but just no thought whatsoever. Didn't even tell us.
That's just not how this place is supposed to work. And I guess we did get some advice about this that this might not be or that it would not be I can't really talk much about it but we do have certain privileges in this House, and one of them is the ability to bring forward Private Member's bills.
In my experience in eight years, it's very daunting for an individual MLA to bring forward a Private Member's bill. The cards are stacked against you right from the very start in terms of yeah, we can access the assistance from a law clerk but we don't have departments. We don't have resources at our disposal to go out and do consultations on bills, discussion papers, What We Heard reports. Private Members don't have any of those kind of resources. So now adding on a requirement for sorry, and that's just the start of it. You know, and if Cabinet doesn't support your Private Member's bill, quite frankly it's a very, very difficult task to try to get it through this House. I want to hats off to my colleague from Yellowknife North who managed to get a Private Member's bill through amending the Ombud Act with the support of Regular MLAs even though Cabinet wouldn't support it. But the cards are stacked against you right from the beginning as a Regular Member on Private Member's bills. We don't even have proper procedures for standing committees to review them. It's very difficult. I just you know, and having tried it a few times, it's a monument and you really have to have a lot of discipline and gumption to actually get up and try to do it but sometimes that's the only way change actually ever happens. This bill is going to impose one more barrier.
Now Regular Members are going to have to do a statement of consistency, work with the law clerk. And I think that statement of consistency, when it comes to at least one of the items in the declaration, FPIC, free prior informed consent. How can Regular MLAs honestly say that they have done consultation with Indigenous governments about FPIC for their bills coming forward? It's just an impossible barrier to get over. Absolutely impossible. But Cabinet just threw it in the bill. Didn't even bother to ask us. I'm really upset about this. That's not to say I don't support this. But we don't have the resources to do this kind of work but just thrown in by Cabinet, didn't bother to talk to us. One more hurdle for Private Member's bills. I think I'll leave it at that, Madam Chair. Thank you.
Thank you, Member. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is carried.
Carried
Thank you, committee. Do you agree that you have concluded consideration of Committee Report 5519(2)?
Agreed.
