Thank you, Mr. Chair. Looking at this priority, I guess is the best way to put it because it's consistent with, as you said, Mr. Chair, at the top, déjà vu, the first approach committee took was to copy the MVRMA and say let's do full engagement, one step less than consultation, with Indigenous governments by providing them notice. That was not palatable to government, so we said, okay, let's look at a different approach. We went to the PRA, which was not amended. This section is identical to that section. We said, okay, if it's in the PRA, maybe this will be more agreeable to government. Now we are being told no, this is not good enough because gazetting is not good enough.

Well, we have the same concerns around gazetting, that gazetting does not actually give the public the kind of engagement that they deserve, but this is a compromise motion. It's a compromise for what already exists in NWT statutes, and the goal here is to provide something or at the very least, if it is going to be empiric effort, then to send the message very clearly that we need to improve as a government on how we do this. If the federal government can in their wisdom see to include provisions like this in all of their statutes or at least major statutes, then surely a small jurisdiction like ours, that is very closely connected to our residents, can do the same. I do not think this is nearly as open for abuse as the Minister has set out. There are confidentiality protections that apply to lot of those kinds of decision-making.

If we were able to work together and that was the concern -- that is the first time I have heard a concern around land withdrawals -- that could have been brought to committee. We could have worked collaboratively to address it and to build this requirement more holistically to prevent that conflict from happening, but again we are just told no, and now we are back here again, where we are putting a motion forward with half of the information, a motion that already exists in another statute, and being told it cannot be done. So my challenge to this Minister, the Minister who is also the Minister responsible for Public Engagement and Transparency is: find a better way that is palatable to the GNWT machinery and to this House. Thank you, Mr. Chair.