Thanks, Mr. Chair. First off, I guess I would like to clear the record. Yesterday I said that there were no submissions from the oil and gas industry with regard to the development of these bills, and when I went back and checked, there indeed was a letter from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers dated May 3, 2018. It was sent to the department in terms of development of these bills. It is 13 pages long, and I can confidently say that all of their concerns were addressed and have been incorporated into the bill, which is good news, but the standing committee did not receive any submissions from industry on the bill itself.
I do want to note that this made-in-the-North approach did not include amending section 53 of the act itself, and this is where a copy of each regulation that the Commissioner and Executive Council proposes to make shall be published in the Northwest Territories Gazette, and a reasonable opportunity shall be provided to any interested person to make representation to the Minister with respect to the proposed regulation.
That was something that the federal government had put into the legislation. We were required to mirror that approach, so thank goodness that the federal government had the good foresight to put that into the bill. In this made-in-the-North approach that our government has adopted to resource management legislation, why didn't they take that out of the bill? That is a question for the Minister. Thanks, Mr. Chair.