Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Last March the government adopted sweeping devolution legislation without one iota of public review. Members of this House insisted that a meaningful process for public input be put in place. The process now in place is pitiful. The outreach to citizenry on the seven substantive acts is limited to a few newspaper ads inviting people to go to the government website and fight their way through menus to get to a place that they purportedly can leave comments and ask questions.
Then what happens? Constituents report that the response time to questions posted to the site is glacial. A message sent on November 28th asking two questions was ignored until a resident sent a follow-up message on January 9th. Promised an answer within three business days, 10 days later she was still waiting and contacted the office again. Finally, two months after initially posing her questions she received a reply. Hardly responsive.
Another resident had questions but, after composing them and trying to post them, was disappointed to see that they had not been posted. They simply disappeared. After a second attempt with the same results, she gave up in disgust. Again, hardly user friendly.
In response to questions in the House regarding the failure of this approach, the Premier said, “Perhaps in view of the lack of response, we could extend the process and start another communications process to acquaint people to the legislation.”
Devolve and evolve, the Premier has said, I couldn’t agree more. What would responsible consultation on such comprehensive land and resource legislation entail? I would suggest committee involvement, discussion papers, public meetings, an interactive process to actually engage and debate the merits of the law and where changes are warranted would be a minimum effort. Putting the onus on the public to consult a murky and underperforming website is hardly the hallmark of an open and transparent government. Where are the public meetings to discuss these comprehensive and complex new laws? Where is the much touted claim to make it made-in-the-North legislation?
In these critical areas of policy and law, our government is not only not listening but it seems completely disinterested. I ask what will this Premier do to put in place a meaningful consultation process in the eight months left in our term.
Mr. Premier, tick tock, tick tock. We are running out of time. We either go on record as failing our people and our claims of transparencies and inclusion once again or we get it done. What will it be?