Thank you, Mr. Chair. As was stated by the Minister, this bill was a real collaborative effort. I noted in the Minister’s opening comments, he said it was a priority of the 17th Assembly. I’m
very glad that it was and I’m very glad we’re to this point, because it has been some 10 years that NEBS has been trying to get legislation to govern their operations, and it’s very gratifying that we are finally to this point where we’re just about ready to see third reading for this bill.
I want to echo the comments that have already been made about the uniqueness of the process. It certainly was unusual. It has been done before, but unusual for me that we were dealing with a bill and trying to mirror a bill in another jurisdiction at the same time that we were dealing with our bill. The collaboration between both governments and both standing committees was excellent. I have to compliment the work of the Law Clerks on both sides of this issue, both in the NWT Assembly and
in the Nunavut Assembly. They did a huge amount of work, and also the Clerk staff did a huge amount of work to coordinate things, the back and forth, talking about language and getting the language the same and making sure that the bills are exactly the same.
We did delay the first reporting. The first deadline for reporting came and went. We asked for an extension and got that. I think it was an excellent decision and I’m glad the House supported that, because it allowed us the time to coordinate with Nunavut and also allowed us to comprehensively look at the concerns which had been brought forward by the many stakeholders that we heard from.
It has been said that maybe we were a little surprised by the interest, and the consultation can be viewed both ways. Some people thought there was lots of consultation and other people thought there was none. I think, as Mr. Bromley stated, it means that the government, any time they bring a bill forward, needs to probably think outside the box in terms of their consultation. They need to make sure that they do more consultation rather than less and consider who they’re consulting with and if it really is going to get to the people who are going to be affected by the piece of legislation. In this case the consultation may have been done by NEBS, but it c
ertainly didn’t translate into what the actual
pension holders heard as any kind of a concern until we kind of came to the 11th hour.
But that said, there were a very large number of concerns that were raised, very valid concerns. As a committee, with the extra time we were able to consider those concerns in depth, we were able to get advice from both our Clerk and from the Law Clerk and to consider whether or not changes were necessary. I think it
’s 12 motions that we brought
forward during the clause-by-clause review, all 12 of which were supported by the Minister.
It’s led us to a far better piece of legislation than what we started out with. It addresses the concerns of the stakeholders; it addresses the concerns of the sponsors of the bill; and I think
it’s going to be a
piece of legislation that’s going to last without amendment for a fairly long period of time, at least I hope it will.
It certainly gives certainty to NEBS, who runs the program, to the pension committee that does all the work for the pension holders, and I think for the pension holders and the employees and the employers it’s going to provide much more certainty than we had before.
I think that’s it, Mr. Chair. I’m just really pleased that we are to this point. I look forward to NEBS operating as well as they have in the past as we go forward.
I guess I did want to say that there’s absolutely no concern on the part of me, and I think most of committee, that we had any concerns with how NEBS has been operating the plan over the last numbe
r of years without legislation. They’ve done
an excellent job. But they requested the legislation, we knew that the legislation needed to be put in place, and now that it’s here, it’s just going to provide certainty, as I said, for everybody involved. Thanks, Mr. Chair.