Thank you, Mr. Chair. I first want to acknowledge the hard work of the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment and on the part of the sponsoring Minister to collaborate on improvements of the bill. Thirty-four motions were moved that were concurred with by the Minister in the committee review stage and did result in a bill that is now more connected with the co-management regime that exists in the Northwest Territories and has far more public-facing information than the original version of the bill. I think that those are laudable improvements.
I am in an interesting position as the co-writer of a dissenting opinion with my colleague the honourable Member for Frame Lake. This is typically not something that you see all that often, at least in my time in this Assembly. I think that that is largely a result of the accelerated time frame and the urgency that we heard loud and clear from the public on moving Bill 38 forward. I don't take issue with that.
The two outstanding issues that were identified in the dissenting opinion are important issues. They are issues that are informed by the committee's consultations with the public, by the Indigenous co-drafters of the legislation. I will not go into the exacting detail, because that is contained in the dissenting opinion that was read into the record, but, given the seriousness of those concerns and that this bill is one of many that represents a step forward in the government's efforts to reconcile with Indigenous peoples and nations and build a truly world-class regulatory regime that takes into account co-management principles, I feel that it's very important that those principles are reflected in the bill and that we are allowing Indigenous governments to speak in their own words on the kind of improvements that they want to see in the bill, given that they were so close in co-drafting it.
I think that is not at cross-purposes with public government and public governance in the Northwest Territories. We have made this commitment to do this in this area of public policy, and we need to live up to that. The amendment that I am speaking of in particular is just to create a clear legal pathway for the devolution agreement and the intergovernmental agreement to play out in a cohesive and integrated way in the bill and in no way impacts the government's prerogative to exercise its authority to draft regulations.
However, this is a very critical concept and, as a result, a dissenting opinion was required. I look forward to continuing to debate these issues. Of course, during the committee review stage, the motions that came out of the dissenting opinion resulted in a tie, and the chair was required to break that tie to allow for more debate to happen here on the floor. I look forward to that debate because these are critical issues, and I think the issues that my colleague and I have brought forward are worthy of consideration by this House in a fair and open mind in how we proceed. Thank you, Mr. Chair.