Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This Wildlife Act was identified by this Assembly and by this Cabinet and government as one of the big pieces of legislation they wanted to see done after a process of some 10 years or so of work. We, as well, developed a unique approach with Aboriginal governments towards drafting this legislation where we had lawyers, working group members from the Aboriginal governments, as well as GNWT staff and lawyers working, and they’ve been working and put in thousands of hours over the last couple of years. They’ve gone to every community. They have come up with a process that’s unique and does not exist anywhere in this country that I know of.
It’s unfortunate the Member has chosen on the basis of one comment that he thought he heard in one meeting, at the tail end of one meeting, in spite of the hundreds and thousands of hours, the hundreds of hours of work and all the communities that have been visited and the dozens and dozens of groups that have been consulted with, to condemn the whole process outright.
There have been 54 drafts done of this bill; 54, Mr. Speaker, based on all the work that’s been done, the feedback we’ve gotten. I’ve got a list here of 56 pages of the feedback that we’ve received and that we’ve responded to. So for the Member to say how can we have confidence, the proof will be in the pudding.
If you took the first draft and the 54th draft, I can tell
you we haven’t just been spending our time changing commas and looking at making it a little tighter from a grammatical point of view. So the process is there. It’s been bought into by all the Aboriginal governments, it’s a unique process and it’s going to bring to the table a piece of legislation that is 10 years overdue. Thank you.