Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that subclause 15.1(1) of Bill 74 be amended by.
(a) adding the following immediately preceding subparagraph (a)(i):
(0.i) any research activities of the Forest Superintendent under paragraph 15(3)(b),
(b) deleting "; and" at the end of the English version of subparagraph (a)(iv) and substituting a semicolon; and.
(c) deleting paragraph (b) and substituting the following:
(b) the total number of inspections and investigations conducted under Part 7;
(c) the total number and total amount of fines and other penalties imposed under Part 8; and
(d) any prescribed information.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. The motion is in order. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. First off, I just need to get it clearly on the record I'm not raising any of this to delay or derail this bill in any way. I want this bill to pass, and I want it to pass in this sitting. I support the Legislative Development Protocol. I support the process convention. These are minor tweaks to the bill to improve transparency and accountability. This is about the public aspects of this bill. This is not about anything else. And I think it's a debate that we can and should have on the floor of this House. That's always been my objective as an MLA throughout my year eight years in this place, is to increase openness, transparency, and accountability and that's what I'm trying to do here. This is not ability trying to usurp the codevelopment process of this legislation. This is not about usurping the process convention where we codraft or coreview this bill with the departmental staff, with the Indigenous governments, and Minister. That's not what this is about. This is about trying to increase transparency and accountability.
So I want this bill done and I just want it done right, and I want a few minor tweaks. That's what I'm here to talk about tonight.
So the things that this bill there's a lot of wording in here. What this really does is add two three things to the annual report that the forest superintendent would do. We've actually just heard the Minister say they're okay with that. So I don't know I'm hoping that the Minister and Cabinet will actually support this addition. This Minister just said that he was okay with it. So (a) or the first thing to be added is any research activities of the forest superintendent under paragraph 15(3)(b). So remember this: We're talking about a summary. We're not talking about all research activity. This is a summary of the research that the forest superintendent intends to undertake under 15(3)(b) of the Act. This is not about any other research that the forest superintendent may do. This is about the what the forest superintendent is explicitly allowed to do under the legislation. So why not get a summary of the research that the forest superintendent does? I think it's a good thing.
Secondly, the other addition here is about adding into the report the total number of inspections and investigations conducted under Part 7. We're not talking about individual case information. This is just to provide some information to the public that and some confidence to the public that, wow, there is actually inspections and investigations taking place under the Act. So they know, wow, it's good; they're actually doing their job. And that's a good thing.
The other thing to be added would be total number and total amount of fines and other penalties imposed in terms of enforcement actions. That's what I find in Part 8. That's probably another good thing for the public to know that if somebody does something contrary to what the legislation, action is taken. It's a good thing. Why wouldn't we want the public not to know about those things? So that's what this is about is adding three small items to the list of things that the forest superintendent would put into an annual report. The Minister's already said he's fine with it. Let's just incorporate it into the bill. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. To the motion. Member for Yellowknife North.
Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. We've had this discussion lots in committee on a number of bills. I guess if it was up to me, I don't think I would legislate any annual report in any piece of legislation. We see that they are moving. We see that often you want different things. Sometimes reporting changes over time. I just don't view what the content of a report is as something that's really the purview of the legislature. Government is pretty committed to publishing more and reporting on far more. We just have added a lot of these clauses, it will cost a lot of government, and I just think there's a better way to tackle it. Thank you.
Thank you, Member. To the motion. Sorry, Member for Thebacha.
Thank you, Madam Chair. It's not very often I agree with Rylund. That's a first time in after four years, it's one time. So, you know, I feel the same way. I'm not going to be writing a forest superintendent's criteria of his job description in a bill. That's up to that's up to the deputy minister and that's up to the people that supervise his department. And I refuse to do that. I think that the bill has been put before us, and it was done by the Indigenous groups and our people. And I refuse to go there. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member for Thebacha. To the motion. Minister of ECC.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I do not support this motion. The GNWT has already agreed to previous standing committee amendments that add mandatory provision to report annually on forest management activities. The amendment adds any research activity to the annual report requirements. This addition is vague and considerable effort would be needed to track everything that the forest superintendent may research over the period of the year. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion. Member for Frame Lake, the Member who
Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I just want to respond to a couple items I heard there. I believe this is within the purview of the legislature. Part of our job part of why I got elected was to make sure that this government is more transparent and more accountable moving forward, and that's what I tried to do over eight years.
Plus, I think this is simply responding to some of the concerns and issues we heard as a standing committee about the forest superintendent having some new authority but no duty to do any of it. So how do we know if the forest superintendent's actually doing these things? Well, we have you know, an annual report is one way to find out. So that's why this was added in.
As to the details of this, about it being vague, well, it's no more vague than, you know, roman numeral three under (a) here, any monitoring under section subsection 26(1). How is that any more vague than or sorry, how's that you know, how's that any clearer than adding research activities? I just don't get it. So this is not vague. This is saying that the forest superintendent has to report on the research that's conducted pursuant to 15(3)(b). Not any other research. And it's to be a summary, that's all. So this response to what we heard increases transparency, accountability. The Minister, a few minutes ago, when the Minister was in the witness table, said that he was okay with this. Now he's saying he's not. I don't know what's going on here, but I believe this is in the public interest to increase transparency and accountability about what the forest superintendent does. And I think it's a good thing in the public interest to add these three items, so I will support it. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. All those in favour, raise your hand. All those opposed, raise your hand. All those abstaining, raise your hand. The motion is defeated.
Defeated.
Clause 15.1, does committee agree?
Agreed.
Thank you.
Agreed.
---Clauses 16 through 47 inclusive approved
Clause 48, does committee agree? Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. So this is a 2.1 here is a new part of the bill that was added as a result of the collaborative review we undertook. And I think one of the issues that we found and this was raised in the last version of the bill in the last Assembly. It was raised again during the public engagement on this bill. I said this in the House at second reading. You know, what is the relationship of forest management as established under this bill, what's the relationship with land use planning?
We have forest ecosystem management plans. We have monitoring and research that's being carried out. And then research sorry, licenses and permits that could be issued for different kind of forest activities. How does land use planning relate to forest permits and licenses, the activities that would be could be authorized under this? And that could include cutting, timber mills, all kinds of stuff. So, you know, we added this in to make it clearer to some extent that permits and licenses issued under the Forest Act really need to be consistent with land use plans that have already been developed and put in place. And that's what this section says.
The one area that's a little bit uncertain still is zoning bylaws. And zoning bylaws are the tool or instrument that local governments use to implement their community plans. Community plans usually set out in kind of a high level what the community's trying to do and achieve in the next 5, 10, 20 years, whatever they decide, you know, goals, objectives, what they're trying to do, how they could reach economic development objectives or socioeconomic objectives, you know, what they want their community to look like. They do that at a fairly high level. The next but the most meaningful way in which they tend to implement those is through zoning bylaws. And those are pretty prescriptive. They divide up the community into different zones and say what things are allowed to happen here, what things are not allowed to happen, when sometimes they have to go back to council to check things. So zoning bylaws are the ways in which land use plans are actually implemented at the community level. And, you know, some of the regional plans that have been developed under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act have zoning as well and permitted, not permitted uses. So that's how they do it even at the regional level. But for community governments, they implement their plans through zoning bylaws.
The problem is zoning bylaws are not mentioned in this section. So I want to ask the Minister, is GNWT going to interpret this part of the legislation in a way that includes zoning bylaws made by community governments, which they prepare these things under GNWT legislation. There's a requirement that they have zoning bylaws. So will GNWT interpret this in a way that they will include zoning bylaws in legally approved land use plans? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Member. Minister.
Thank you. For detail I'll turn to Mr. Wheler, and then, with your permission, Dr. Kelly. Thank you.
Mr. Wheler.
Mahsi, Madam Chair. At the standing committee stage, we did work together as a technical working group and the department and the Standing Committee on the amendment to include the mandatory provision to make sure that licenses and permits issued under the bill will be in compliance with land use plans. That was one of the examples of one example of the 22 amendments that we worked through that really met a mutual goal and was very important. And the technical working group was fully behind that.
In terms of the municipal bylaws and how to consider that, the Forest Act technical working group did carefully consider whether or not and how to look at local bylaws. And we did feel that instead of imposing a solution on municipalities at this time, the technical working group, our understanding is that GNWT and the department will carefully consider and engage municipalities and community partners on possible approaches to deal with municipal level matters. And we know that under the collaboration protocol, the Indigenous governments would be involved in that as well. So the technical working group agrees with the department on that approach.
And also in our discussions, we emphasized that land use plans are critically important, and they're critically important for land and resource management, especially under the modern treaties. And we want to make sure that municipal bylaws are not conflated at all with the land use plans that arise from Indigenous governments' constitutional rights and authorities to manage or, in some cases, to comanage land and resources. Mahsi.
Dr. Kelly.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I think it's important to note that the department and the technical working group collectively there are things that the Member has brought forward that we see as being very important to look at during the regulation development process but not for the statute itself. Elevating the bylaws to the statute removes the opportunity to work with the municipalities on a process that meets everyone's need while developing those regulations. And adding zoning bylaws to this provision creates a legislative problem as the GNWT would be bound to comply with bylaws that are only created by the power that the GNWT delegates. So there's more work that needs to be done on this through the regulation development process. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.
Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I guess I'm just having a bit of difficulty understanding some of the things that I just heard. But, you know, I guess I'm pushing this because the Northwest Territories Association of Communities in their written submission said the following: There should be some sort of acknowledgement of complying with various types of community bylaws including, but not limited to, general plans and zoning bylaws, fire prevention bylaws, tree harvesting bylaws, soil protection bylaws, open air burning bylaws, among others.
So we're only talking about land use planning at this point so but they've specifically asked for zoning bylaws to be recognized in here, and that's what their a legitimate order of government, community governments, and I'm not sure why we would accord them any less status than federal the federal government, which has enacted the MVRMA, but the you know, community governments through the I better get the name of the legislation properly here, Madam Chair.
It's the Community Planning and Development Act, section 18(1), says the following: A zoning bylaw may include provisions respecting one or more of the following matters either generally or with respect to any zone or part of a zone, (o) cutting of trees, (p) preservation of habitat. They can also regulate land use by having permitted/not permitted uses. So I don't know why, if we've recognized land use plans that are enacted through federal legislation, we can't accord the same sort of consideration to zoning bylaws which enable currently enable community governments to do much the same thing. But we just I guess I've heard from the witnesses that they don't want to go there right now. This is not about imposing anything on community governments. This is in response to what NWTAC said to committee. So with all of that, Madam Chair, I do want to move a motion if I can.
Thank you. Go ahead, Member for Frame Lake.
