Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Is committee agreed?

With that, we will take a short break.

---SHORT RECESS

I would like to call Committee of the Whole back to order. Prior to going on break we had agreed to review Committee Report 7-16(5), which is a report on Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Dog Act. Once we are done that review, then we will move along to Bill 16, which is the Act to Amend the Dog Act. The first thing we will do is Committee Report 7-16(5). Does committee agree?

Are there any general comments on Committee Report 7-16(5)? Detail? We will go to Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to provide a few comments if I could. I know, along with my colleague Mr. Bromley, we have read the report into the House the other day, but I just want to again thank the committee for the work it did on Bill 16, An Act to Amend the Dog Act, as well as I want to commend the Minister of MACA, R.C. McLeod, for his work on the development of the amendments to Bill 16 and appreciate his work on that as well as the staff at MACA that brought this to us. We appreciate that.

Of course, the important thing is what the public had to say. I can’t believe the amount of traffic that we received on Bill 16 and the amendments during the public hearing process. There were just some big crowds in Inuvik, Hay River, Fort Smith and here in Yellowknife. There was a lot of interest in the amendments. A lot of people are watching the progress of the amendments to the Dog Act, Bill 16, not only in the Northwest Territories but around the country and around the world, for that matter. I’ve received e-mails from countries around the world that they’re interested to see what we’re doing in trying to prevent cruelty, neglect and abuse of dogs in our Territory.

So, again, I just wanted to say I really appreciate all of the comments we receive from the public. Everybody that made presentations to the committee while we were in the various communities, and maybe a couple of special mentions to a couple of people; Ms. Bonnie Dawson in Hay River. She’s worked tirelessly at promoting animals and protection of dogs in particular in the community of Hay River and around the Northwest Territories and she’s to be commended. She’s a great champion for the protection of dogs and animals and I want to thank her publicly for that devotion. Also Nicole Spencer, president of the SPCA in the Northwest Territories and also Linda Eccles with the SPCA in Inuvik as well, I wanted to just make special mention to those folks for all that they’ve done in getting the amendments to where they were. I think those folks had a lot to do with the turnout at the public hearings that we saw when we were in the various communities.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I’ll conclude my comments. Before I do that I just again wanted to thank the staff, Ms. Knowlan, Ms. Tumchewics and Ms. Langlois, as well as our Law Clerk, Ms. MacPherson, for their help in getting this to where we’re at today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Next on my list is Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As Mr. Ramsay indicated, this bill certainly caused a lot of discussion to some of the clauses that we’ve worked on. It was quite a task for Members to come together and move it to this level here. I do want to say that this act is outdated and that we’re bringing it forward where it’s a somewhat controversial matter.

We did not have the opportunity as committee to go to the smaller communities and to listen to the Aboriginal people in the smaller communities. We took the onus, and it was our decision, to go into the larger centres. However, we missed the opportunity to go into small places such as Kakisa or Colville Lake or Tsiigehtchic or Ulukhaktok. We didn’t hear from the First Nations people, the Aboriginal people and we didn’t hear them in their own language where they can express themselves more clearly and better. We missed that opportunity to get their perspective on the Dog Act. We heard mostly from the larger centres where we went in and that was, for myself, a missed opportunity to have input from the communities, because there were some issues that we certainly needed to hear from our Aboriginal partners.

The smaller communities prefer you to sit across the table and talk to you in that manner, rather than send us letters or e-mails. It’s not really that way of communicating with us from our communities on such important issues as this one. There were a lot

of good suggestions and a lot of things that we were talking about outside our committee meetings, to a point where people were saying that there’s something mixed up here because we’re now talking about...And there are many reasons that we heard for the protection of dogs. It’s a Dog Act here so we’re protecting. Usually dogs are to protect people. Somewhere we got turned around and we’re now protecting the dogs for a lot of reasons that we heard. A lot of reasons. Now that we’re spending a lot of time on this one here we have other issues that people talk to me about in terms of this Dog Act.

This Dog Act I didn’t think was going to get so much play time until I witnessed the large crowd that turned out here in Yellowknife. I heard it in Smith, and on the radio, and in Inuvik and, of course, in Hay River. A lot of people feel very passionately about the Dog Act. So I want to say that we never got the whole picture. We’re missing half of our population on this important legislation. I didn’t think that was fair or right. I do want to say we had some very important things to say about this legislation.

However, we’re at this point here, the juncture that we have to continue moving on. I want to make it for the record that we missed our Aboriginal partnerships on this piece of legislation. This government here represents all people. I want to say that, for the record, hopefully when we look at further legislation that it will encompass all communities such as this one here. The Aboriginal people believe that dogs are for protection for us and there are strong cultural and traditional beliefs on that. We never really got the meaning of those beliefs or traditions. We made assumptions. We thought we could understand it, but we needed to hear from the older people and people in our communities what they talk about this specific issue here and what we mean by traditional use or cultural use. The meaning behind what they’re trying to get across to us, I think we did capture it in some of our new wording and it’s a good compromise.

I do want to say to all the Members on the committee that we heard a lot of discussion on this and we had some good discussion in the committee meetings. We came to a compromise; I hope we can bring this through. I do want to say that I’d like to thank the chairman for your leadership and the Members for bringing it this far here. Those are my comments.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Next on my list is Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to start by thanking the chair of the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Infrastructure for guiding us through consultations on this proposed act. It’s been a huge one, as my colleague Mr. Yakeleya has mentioned. Much

bigger than we had expected. I’ve appreciated his guidance and the assistance of our staff. As I believe our chair said, I was very impressed and thankful to all the people of the NWT who took time to participate in those consultations.

We had tremendous turnouts, tremendous and enthusiastic turnouts, passionate presentations, both at our public consultations and through written submissions and comments. We had people from, you know, long-term dog mushers to representatives of various societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. A huge diversity of people. We had a lot of Aboriginals speak, a lot of lifelong Northerners, right down to people relatively new to the North. A lot of these are busy people, not necessarily comfortable in these sorts of settings. They came out and spoke frankly to us.

We decided in our consultations not to go into small communities but to centre our consultations on the large or regional centres with the option to bring people from small communities into those regional centres if they wish to present. Sort of a standard practice for many of our consultations.

I think I’ll leave it at that because our standing committee report basically covered things well. I just want to be sure to express my appreciation again to the people of the NWT who have participated in this, as well as my colleagues. I’ll leave it at that.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Menicoche.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. The amendments to the Dog Act, I did have a constituency meeting in Fort Simpson and raised the issue. My constituency felt that the power was best left to the municipality. Now it’s before committee and introduced by government, the amendments.

It’s a very passionate subject, as I saw when I was very happy to attend the Fort Smith public hearing. Lots of people came out and shared their views and passion about it. They cited many, many examples of possible dog cruelty. It depends on your perspective too.

Our small communities, I travelled to them often, just like Norman does, and talked to the people and see how as an Aboriginal person we… I think the feeling is that in the small communities that the standards of larger communities and even national, I know that the committee got international comments there as well. To me, I always feel that they’re dictating to how small the communities and how Aboriginal cultures should dictate themselves. I always feel that’s something that’s fundamentally wrong.

However, I think the Dog Act came up for review because there was a loophole in there that was very difficult to convict somebody if there was an

act of cruelty, because our dog legislation really didn’t speak about that. I think that the amendments, the difficulty with the amended Dog Act as it is, is that we try to make it animal protection legislation and we cannot. That’s what people, I really felt that’s what people are looking for. I’m with them and I believe that and it’s unfortunate that we weren’t able to do animal protection legislation in this term. I’m hopeful that our government will certainly see to that in the next government because that’s something that we have to do.

With the new upgraded amendments it will dedicate lots of our government resources. I’m not too sure how the regulations are going to roll out because there’s enough of a change now. We have RCMP involved, possibly our ENR officers chasing dogs as well. I don’t know if that’s the best use of a GNWT resource when we have many, many other issues and concerns out there. To me it does do the job. It’s a good step towards animal protection legislation. To me it might be a little bit of overkill, because I feel, like my constituents, that it’s best left to the municipalities. All we have to do is make a few changes to make sure that people who do contravene the act, the ability is there for them to charge them and up to and including conviction. Yes, some of the fines were low but we didn’t have to go so high. Now I see that there’s a bit of a balance in there. I’m comfortable with that.

In general, I’m supportive of the Dog Act. We had three significant high-profile cases in the North and the incident that happened at Whistler just kind of heightens the need for us to amend the Dog Act and to have convictions with that. With that, I’ll conclude my opening remarks.

Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. I have nobody else on my list. Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, my colleagues, I’d like to thank our chair, Mr. Ramsay, with regard to all the meetings that we had attended. There’s been a lot of heated debate in some of our meetings in regard to wording in the legislation from our Aboriginal to non-Aboriginal members. We worked together. We got through this with the amendments. With the hamlet bylaws in the communities that I know, we never hit all the communities with the act, but all of the hamlet bylaws are still in effect with the communities as well. This is just something that’s going to support it.

We have the public meetings, we had good public meetings in Fort Smith. Unfortunately I missed the one in Inuvik due to the road closure and the ice road being closed. I wasn’t able to attend that one. My colleague said it was a good turnout and they heard a lot of good things in Inuvik. For myself, being a past dog musher, legislation like this is

good for the dogs. I think if you just take care of your dogs, then you won’t have anything to worry about. This shouldn’t even affect anybody in the long run.

I’d like to thank the NWT Dogsledding Association and Grant Beck for all the help and guidance as he’s worked with me through this legislation. I’d just like to thank everybody who threw comments in throughout the Territory and for this legislation. That’s all I have to say.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. I have nobody else on my list. I believe we have some motions. The first motion, I believe, is Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. A motion is on the floor. The motion is being distributed. It looks like the motion has been distributed. The motion is in order. To the motion.

Question has been called.

---Carried

Second motion. Mr. Jacobson.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I move that the committee recommends that the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs consult with the community governments to ensure they have adequate resources, including staff training, to implement the Act to Amend the Dog Act.

Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. A motion is on the floor. The motion is being distributed. The motion has been distributed. The motion is in order. To the motion.

Question has been called.

---Carried

Mr. Yakeleya.