Thanks, Mr. Chair. I noted in the Minister's remarks that he indicated that the Information and Privacy Commissioner and other GNWT departments have been engaged in the development of the legislation. That is a good thing. I didn't hear anything about engagement with Indigenous governments. I assume, then, that the Minister has not heard directly from Indigenous governments on this issue.

I don't really understand what the problem is. Nunavut has the exact same wording in its legislation dating from 2006. They have had this in place and working now for 12-and-a-half years. If there had been a problem with this kind of language, you would think that their act would have been changed in some way. It is the exact same wording, Mr. Chair; nothing different. When the committee was reviewing this, they went to the Nunavut act to try to understand what best practices might be over there, another northern jurisdiction. The exact same wording is taken out of this. I printed the bill myself, the Nunavut act, before I came in here to double-check this, so I don't know what the problem is in putting this in.

This does not require that anybody owns the information. This amendment would just say that the ownership of it should be agreed on when you get into the agreement. It doesn't say who owns it; it just says that you should spell that out to prevent problems from happening in the future. That is what this is about. This is about preventing problems from happening in the future.

The other sorts of things that are to be contained in the agreement are security and confidentiality of personal information, removal and destruction of individual identifiers, things like that. What is wrong with making sure that the agreement includes something about ownership, copyright, and right to use the information? It just makes common sense that you would want to put that in to prevent problems from happening in the future.

I don't understand why Cabinet is not in favour of this. I haven't seen any evidence. I haven't seen any correspondence or emails from Indigenous governments about this. If the Bureau of Statistics already has a great working relationship with Indigenous governments, that is wonderful, and this is not going to take away from that. It is just making sure that there is a common understanding of how the information is going to be used and who owns it at the end of the day. This is about preventing problems in the future, and this doesn't tell anybody what to do with the information.

With that, Mr. Chair, I will obviously be supporting the motion, and I urge my Cabinet colleagues to do the same in terms of ensuring that we have best practice here in the Northwest Territories. Thanks, Mr. Chair.