Thank you, Madam Chair. I know there’s been a lot of hard work over the past several years and in previous governments on Bill 3. Coming into the mix and being one of the Members that are asked to support the bill and pass the bill through for the Wildlife Act, it is very hard to jump into this looking at all the concerns that are made from several groups across the NWT, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. However, because I do represent the Inuvik region and I do have some organizations that do have a strong commitment to this Wildlife Act and the hard work that they have done in developing this Wildlife Act and the efforts they made in the last Assembly to ensure that the Wildlife Act was not going to be able to go through to third reading based on some things that contribute, some of the land claim rights and some of our roles and responsibilities of some of these groups.
More specifically, on October 17th , as Members of
the Legislative Assembly, we did receive a letter from the Inuvialuit Game Council, the Gwich’in Tribal Council as well as the NWT Metis Nation, and they expressed a lot of concerns in some of the amendments that were brought forth by SCEDI, the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Infrastructure. Being a Member that’s responsible for bringing these views to the table as we go through the clause-by-clause reviews, there are going to be some amendments and clauses that I probably will not be able to support. Going forward into reading and passing of Bill 3, I will have to do some more consultation before making sure that this bill actually goes through.
We do have three Aboriginal groups here that have done a lot of work, as well as the Government of the Northwest Territories, to try to bring a bill forward that would allow everybody the same rights and give everybody an equal chance to either have a general hunting licence, specialty harvesting licence, but there are provisions within the NWT in that we are unique in that sense, and as I mentioned earlier, as we go through the clause-by-clause we will have to see what amendments and motions are passed through with the bill. But it will be very difficult to support a bill with some of our Aboriginal groups that have really put a lot of input and a lot of interest into this bill going forward. As we move forward, we will see how the process unfolds and respect every Member’s decisions and
comments on the bill today. Thank you, Madam Chair.