Thank you. To the motion, Mr. Testart.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is consistent with other motions that the committee has brought forward, including amendments to bills that I will not reflect on further. This is an important piece of business moving forward into the next Assembly. We have this peculiar artefact in the Petroleum Resources Act that my colleague spoke of where there is a public gazetting process. The federal policy on this is to allow for public comment during gazetting, and in the case of the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, outright consultation with Indigenous governments if any regulations are to be drafted and changed.

This is not foreign to the Northwest Territories. In fact, in regards to our co-management system, I think that something that everyone is comfortable with is the operation of the MVRMA, whether it is industry or Indigenous governments. I think that we must take a position on this, and the government has basically asked for time to figure this out. This needs to be one of the first items of business moving forward. Curiously enough, the requirements for notice and public comment in the Petroleum Resources Act was not removed from the legislation when amendments were brought forward to update the bill, and if that is so problematic, I am not sure why that wasn't done.

Nevertheless, it is important that this gets done and that we allow the public to be able to comment and at least see what these regulations are going to be, especially when regulations are the real meat to the skeleton of our post-devolution legislative framework. It is imperative that we give the public and Indigenous governments the right to be heard on these regulations moving forward. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. To the motion.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed?

---Carried

Thank you, committee. Mr. Vanthuyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that this committee recommends, to the extent it is possible before the dissolution of the 18^th Assembly and for the public record, that the government provide a response to these recommendations, even of a preliminary nature, that committee may publicly disclose. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Vanthuyne. There is a motion on the floor. To the motion.

Is the motion distributed? The motion has not been distributed. It will be distributed. The motion has been distributed. To the motion.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed?

---Carried

Thank you, committee. Does committee agree that this concludes our consideration of Committee Report 31-18(3)?

Thank you, committee. Consideration of Committee Report 31-18(3) is now concluded. Committee, we have agreed to next consider Bill 46, Public Land Act. I will turn to the Minister responsible for the bill to provide opening comments. Minister Sebert.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am here to present Bill 46, Public Land Act. The purpose of the bill to is establish the rules for creating and transferring interest in public land from one party to another.

Bill 46 seeks to harmonize the two existing public land administration regimes under the Northwest Territories Lands Act and the Commissioner's Land Act. This bill addresses the technical and administrative inconsistencies between the acts and consolidates them into a single legislative foundation. Public land administration cuts across all sectors and all regions. This harmonization allows us to better serve our residents, attract investment, and diversify our economy.

Bill 46 addresses the administration of public land through:

• issuing and administering leases for a range of uses such as residences, cabins, agriculture, and small businesses;
• setting aside public land through government reserves or land withdrawals to support public infrastructure development, land claim negotiations, and protected areas;
• administering quarry and mineral resources; and
• inspections and compliance programs to prevent public liabilities.

Bill 46 is the result of careful work and broad engagement and is an important first step to help improve land administration in the Northwest Territories. Northerners need to have a consistent legislative base for public land administration to evolve and respond to local needs.

I would like to thank Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment for their thorough review of the bill. I would also like to thank our respective officials for their collaboration to find mutually agreeable solutions that have enhanced and improved the bill. I am prepared to answer any questions Members may have. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Does the chair of the standing committee that reviewed the bill have any general comments? I see none, so I will ask the Minister to take his place at the witness table. Sergeant-at-Arms, please escort the witnesses into the Chamber. Maybe my mic was not on. Minister, can you please introduce your witnesses for the record.

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. To my left is Willard Hagen, deputy minister of Lands; to my right, Melissa Bard, manager, legislation, Lands; and, to her right, Christina Brownlee, legislative counsel, Justice. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. I will open the floor to general comments on the bill, beginning with Mr. Testart.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I want to take the opportunity to say how delighted I am to see the legislation that came forward, the final form of this legislation. Earlier, when we were consulting with the government on how best to bring about changes to our land acts, there was a lot of back and forth between the standing committee and the government, and one of the strong desires of committee was to get a move on with amalgamating the acts into a single piece of legislation. This is something that has eluded the Yukon, for example, for more than 10 years, and committee felt very strongly it could be done, and the government has done it, and they deserve to be commended for that approach.

Now, it's not perfect, and I think there are some other improvements that can be sought, but it's a very good start. From the public's perspective on our consultations on this bill, most of the issues that Northerners have with land access and land tenure are largely confined to policy decisions rather than things that can be addressed in the legislation, so I think this legislation puts the department and the government on solid footing to better administer the public land of the Northwest Territories and to start resolving some of these entrenched policy issues that have held back economic development in local communities, that have created uncertainty and confusion in untenured land, and we can finally start to move forward and abandon the piecemeal approach we have taken to resolving some of these land issues in the past.

I was very pleased to work with the government and to find the Minister and his staff open to considering the viewpoints of committee and ultimately working together on consensual amendments to improve the bill. There are a few issues that will come up, but largely this has been an excellent process. Again, I think it took a lot to move this bill into one piece of legislation. They said it could not be done, and then they found out a way to do it, so kudos to the Minister and the Department of Lands and to our support staff, as well, on the committee end. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. General comments. Mr. Vanthuyne.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't want to add too much to the previous speaker, except to say that this is going to be a bill that is going to do a lot of good work as it relates to streamlining the administration of lands, which I think we all want that goal and we have all strived to reach that. It has been a very big challenge since devolution to run off two different land acts and try to administer those acts, so I think the effort to unify them and bring them together under one act was the right move to do at the end of the day.

However, I just want to identify that this does not erase a number of land issues that are still out there. It was an eye opener and an experience for committee to travel to the communities, which we did, and to hear what many stakeholders had to say as it related to lands and the challenges they have been having with lands. It did not seem to matter what jurisdiction we were in. In some instances, whether it was in settled claim areas or whether it was in municipal areas or whether it was in small communities, there is a variety of land use challenges out there that I think we have to be very aware of and have to do a really good job of overcoming those challenges.

We are starting to do some of the good work to overcome those challenges, but I think one of those key challenges is just about becoming more effective communicators as it relates to land uses and land use planning and trying to build some continuity and consistency around land use so that no matter where you are in the territory, recognizing that circumstances are different in each area, but that we need to get past this idea that where one land use might have been granted a certain way or means of being able to do things one way and then granting a way or a means to do something in another jurisdiction and, in some instances, not by even the right authority. So we want to make sure that we are doing good work in terms of first of all identifying and realizing that there are a number of lands use issues and then working towards getting over those challenges and communicating them effectively. This amalgamation of land acts and putting forward the Public Land Act is a very positive step forward in doing that, so I want to commend the department and everybody who worked on and contributed to this act to get it to where it is today. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Further? Mr. O'Reilly.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have three specific things I guess I would like to raise with the Minister. We heard from Indigenous governments that this is a bill that was not developed collaboratively; there was no co-development process for it. I just would like an explanation from the Minister as to why that did not happen with this bill. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. Minister.