Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to thank all those people who put all the hard work in the years before us. I would like to thank all the Members that are in the EDI committee and all the Regular Members that sat in and were involved. It was a great pleasure to travel around the North, getting feedback from the public.

This being probably one of the biggest acts that I’ve been involved with in my short period as an MLA, it is very difficult. You are being pulled from one direction to another. You tweak one of the sections and then another group would be involved, either an organization or non-Aboriginal groups or Aboriginal groups that would have concern with the wording. So it’s very complex when you’re dealing with these acts. Some of the tweaking that we’re looking at has to be done in regulations, so some of my colleagues have talked about that. Skepticism from all organizations about what the regulations are going to read and how they’re going to read and what are those regulations are going to have as an impact on the whole act.

The whole fact is it does polarize the territory. We need to distinguish non-Aboriginal rights, Aboriginal rights and where those are. It seems like to the non-Aboriginals, we get concerns from them that it seems like there is a two-tiered system, but on the other hand, the Constitution of Canada recognizes those treaty rights. Coming from an area where it’s Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, coming from an area where the community right next to us is not settled, there are a whole bunch of different issues that my colleague just mentioned. Even the issue of residency, we went into one community and they say it should be two years and another group says, well, one year. Even following that, they would say, well, it should be one year if they have approval from the community or somebody marries an Aboriginal person from the community. So we have varying decisions from varying people, depending on who we talk to.

Even the simplest concepts of training and reporting, people would like to know what’s being taken so we can manage. Some of the Aboriginal groups feel that steps on their rights. I mean, some of that stuff I know they’re just as interested in making sure that the people who are out there hunting are safe and we want to get some sort of indication from an elder or somebody who says, yes, this person is a safe hunter, safe trapper. So it’s very difficult. I would compare it to probably my carpentry skills and trying to put up boards around my house, where I cut one piece and I think it fits, and then I cut it again and it doesn’t quite fit, so I have to start over again. Some of the pieces in this act that we’ve tried to change and tweak are very difficult to please everybody, but I think we’re at the point where the majority of people are in favour of the majority of what’s being put in the bill. Yes, the

regulations are probably going to tweak that and there’s going to be a big discussion on that.

Obviously, working with committee, I’ve put my two cents in and I think this is as close to a good act that we can get. Is it perfect? No, it’s not going to be perfect for everybody. You talk to all the groups and they have some sort of concerns. Obviously, how it’s going to be implemented is the biggest issue there.

That being said, I’m definitely supportive of it. I think we’re at the point where we can justify with most people why we’ve gone this way. We’ve even come up recently with some amendments. Speaking with the Minister’s office, we’ve softened some of the wording to allow him the flexibility, and make sure there’s flexibility in the Aboriginal groups to allow them to feel that their rights are not being affected.

Again, I’d like to finish by just thanking the Minister and everybody who has been involved, all the organizations and all the MLAs who were before us who have put time into it and our current MLAs who have put all their time into it. Thank you, Madam Chair.