Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. This motion is one of two, but I will just speak to this one. It is an amendment, a motion to amend the bill. This is a notice in consideration of new or amended regulation.
What this says is, if the Minister is going to implement new regulations, 30 days before they are made, those regulations are shared with Indigenous governments, renewable resource boards, and land use planning bodies or boards, and those groups are allowed to present their views to the Minister, and the Minister should consider them. It does not require the Minister to consider them. It does not require the Minister to delay implementation of regulations if there is no feedback provided. It just requires formal notice within 30 days. That, I think, is a very reasonable compromise from what the Indigenous organizations, the IGOs, were asking for, which was full co-drafting of regulations, so no regulation-making authority without their explicit cooperation and consent.
That is not what is being proposed here. It's a much more modest proposal that just requires that everyone who co-drafted the legislation is left in the loop when regulations are made. You know, I anticipate a lot of debate, and we will hear people speaking, my honourable colleagues saying that this limits the Minister's ability to act, that this impedes the relationship with Indigenous governments, more that we have heard today. I want to be very clear that Indigenous governments have asked for a similar provision to this, and, again, in no way does this put any limitation on what the Minister can put into regulations. It is a notice period, and it is a very reasonable and modest proposal.
Again, what we heard and what struck me most about this process, because I was somewhat hesitant to embrace co-drafting until I saw it work, I believe in the supremacy of this institution, the supremacy of parliaments as they are representative of a people. However, the devolution agreement has opened up my eyes to something very important, that for many years Indigenous people have not felt like they are participants in the laws of the land. They had their own traditions and laws dating back to time immemorial, and the laws of Ottawa or the laws of Yellowknife or the laws of Edmonton or whatever provincial capital are not necessarily the laws of Indigenous peoples.
Having an opportunity to bring them to the table to cooperatively develop this legislation I think was one of the most powerful moves that the GNWT has made in the post-devolution era and in the era of reconciliation, and it speaks much louder to those principles than I think any provincial or federal government has done before. I want to see this process continue because no one criticized it. They criticized some of the products of the process, but everyone said: this process must remain; it must be strengthened.
We have asked the Minister about how he intends to deal with regulations. I don't think the Minister is blind to these concerns. All we have is a commitment to go back to the intergovernmental council and do a post-mortem, a lessons learned, and then come up with something. We do not know if that is going to be formal process, an informal process, a policy direction. We are not sure what it is. That kind of uncertainty for a mechanism that has been developed in good faith between government-to-government relationships, that really speak to the core value of reconciliation and has realized reconciliation, we have to keep going with that. We cannot risk it to chance.
The other problem is the intergovernmental council does not represent all of the co-drafters who put Bill 38 together, so, to ensure that their interests, as well -- and they all spoke to the process being very conciliatory. We had people, Indigenous organizations, who have taken the GNWT to court on multiple occasions say: this is working; this is a good process, and we are very happy with it.
Seeing that sea change, it's important to, I think, everyone who is taking reconciliation seriously, so I do commend the government for doing that, but I think we should open up a pathway in law that clearly respects those principles. Again, this amendment does not limit the government's ability to make regulations. It is a duty of notice and nothing more than that, and I think it shows respect for our Indigenous co-drafters, respect for our constitutionally entrenched co-management boards and bodies, and is an improvement that shows we are walking the walk and not just talking the talk when it comes to reconciliation. Thank you, Mr. Chair.