Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of Justice.
Can the Minister please give us an update on where Bill C21 is at federally and what he thinks is the next step that the federal government will be taking? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Great Slave. Minister responsible for Justice.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do my best to stay up to date with our own legislative agenda so I can't give too many specifics about it. But Bill C21 was introduced, and it is now with the committee. So committee is undergoing a review. I believe it was in November, there was a government amendment to the bill which added a significant number of firearms to the list of prohibited firearms, and that has since been withdrawn. So that's where we are with the bill. The committee stage is continuing. And I expect that there will likely be movement in the next few weeks on this bill. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And thank you to the Minister for that. And I also do want to thank the Minister for a stronger response back to the government after we first spoke about the initial GNWT position.
Can the Minister then speak, does the GNWT anticipate having to submit any more information to this committee or have any further interaction or ability to input to the committee before any other decisions are made? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So last week I spoke to the federal Minister, Minister Mendicino. He is the Minister of public safety, and he is the lead on this bill. And I did my best to explain the context of the Northwest Territories, the history of the Northwest Territories. And he was fresh off a trip to the Yukon where he heard the same things, and he had been hearing the same things from Nunavut. So I know that he got the message. And I wrote a letter back to him thanking him for pulling that amendment and inviting him to come to the territory and engage with the people of the territory. I tried to hit that home during our conversation that the federal government needs to talk to the people on the ground. So I'm doing my best to get him or his department up here to have those conversations. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I'm really glad to hear that the Minister has invited the federal government to come, and I hope that that will he will continue to apply some pressure there and not just allow us to be sloughed off as often sometimes seems to be the case with the feds.
Can the Minister commit that not only pushing for that federal government meeting but to then actively engage our side of the House in ensuring that our constituents and people in our ridings are having the opportunity to meet with the Minister should they come to the territory? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will do what I can, but sometimes we learn about federal engagement after it happens. So it's hard for me to commit to doing that. But this is an issue that is close to the heart of many people in the Northwest Territories. So despite the fact that it is a federal bill, we are on top of it and we are paying attention, and I will continue to share information with the Members and I will continue to advocate for the people of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, will the Minister commit to ensuring that the federal government knows that the GNWT will not stand for any of the guns to be added back to the C21 bill? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. So the primary issue that we ran into was with the amendments to the bill. The initial Bill C21, it spoke to handguns, making efforts to reduce family violence with red and yellow flag laws, and things like that. The amendments are what introduced a number of rifles that were not prohibited previously. So we don't even know in the territory how many of these rifles are out there. We've made some estimates but there could be thousands of rifles in the territory that were affected by that bill. One model is the SKS. That seems to be the most popular one. And so just that alone is one gun that we don't want to see prohibited. I can't say the same for all of the other rifles on there. But we are doing our best to ensure that any rifles that are used for hunting by Indigenous people and Northerners don't make it back on that list. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Hay River South.
