Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, one of the reasons we wanted this motion or the Minister to have the authority to grant the exemptions is in emergency situations, there may be exemptions that may need to be granted. I can assure Members that and it is tied to regulations. Bill 27 received assent. I can’t go out tomorrow and start granting exemptions. We have exemptions. I think we had a discussion when we brought this before committee. We have talked about making it a public process and we did manage to get that amendment into the bill where we go through a public process if time permits, but there are times where a Minister will need to make a decision.

One of the things we don’t want to do too is, you waste a lot of things by unnecessary processes or red tape, try and have things flow through smoothly. A Member made reference before about the comments that were received by some organizations across from the Northwest Territories as to the bill. We got feedback. There was some concern raised with the Minister’s ability to grant exemptions. We responded to them and we explained to them how the process was going to work. We have not heard back from them. We take that as they’re comfortable with the fact that exemptions will be tied to regulation. There are also opportunities again if time permits, to have a lot of public input, and I made that commitment when we made the amendment to Bill 27 for our consideration in committee. We have heard from a number of people across the Northwest Territories. We heard from Aboriginal governments and organizations, 265 stakeholders, and 99 Aboriginal governments and organizations were involved during the second round of consultations.

We are obviously not going to support the motion. I have a lot of trust and faith in our department and the Minister's ability to do what is right for the people of the Northwest Territories. Thank you.