Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am going to try to confine my comments as much as possible to the substance of the report and the committee's experience in reviewing the bill.
Not getting into the substantive merits, flaws, or concerns around the actual piece of legislation, committee's process was, I think, an interesting one, where the steps were taken to collaborate with the sponsoring Minister on how we could find common ground on improvements to the bill, but there were some very hard lines that were established in our process. That kind of intransigence is very difficult to deal with in a system of government where the Minister is ultimately the gatekeeper of changes made to the bill.
Oftentimes, the lack of certainty and clarity were really the fundamental concerns of committee, and it took a lot of public engagement to address some of those concerns with substantive changes to the bill and the necessary improvements. I think that should be a reminder of how important public engagement is and how important public views are in shaping the legislative process in this House. We have to constantly endeavour to ensure that that takes place, because sometimes both governments and Members can miss the point of things that are important to Northerners and to our partner governments and, of course, in this case, to industry as well.
I still think that we could have had a smoother process if committee had been more engaged and involved with the drafting of the bill and had a better understanding of how that was managed. The committee will be bringing forward a more comprehensive report on this, but in the case of this bill, in particular, the co-drafting exercise, which I think is a necessary step in the evolution of governance in the Northwest Territories and establishing a very clear role for Indigenous partnership in drafting public laws, there still needs to be a role of legislative oversight and the ability of both the public and of Members of this House and appropriate standing committees to alter, change, improve, or otherwise make amendments to sections that have been previously agreed-upon at the drafting level.
I think that that needs to be a very clear part of our process that intransigence and hard lines drawn on changes to bills really have to be carefully considered. The viewpoints that are shared with the committee need to be carefully considered by government Ministers as well, because, again, they are the ultimate gatekeepers on what can be changed at the committee stage, and if the committee feels very strongly that changes need to be made and that is backed up by public viewpoints, it can be a very frustrating experience to not be allowed to make those changes, even when your convictions say that they ought to be made.
That being said, there were plenty of other areas of common ground that the committee was able to find with the sponsoring Minister and direct relationships with staff on both ends of the table, that helped make some of those compromise adjustments to the bill. It's not all bad, but certainly the largest concerns I do not think really found the cooperation necessary to address them in a timely fashion, which is one of the reasons by the clause-by-clause was a four-hour review, late into the night. I hope we can avoid this in the future, especially around pivotal pieces of legislation like the Mineral Resources Act, and I hope we can broaden our engagement at all times when we are passing laws like this, that are fundamental to our economy, fundamental to our territory, that involve as much public input and stakeholder engagement as possible.
That should be an important lesson learned for all Members of the House, but in particular governments who are bringing forward legislation: do it early; don't do it late; give time for committee to request extensions when needed to do their due diligence; and make sure that bills are ready to go forward so that we are not in a situation where we have to go back later on and make improvements after all of this process has gone by and that the public feels like there is actual opportunity for this House to change bills in a way that the public supports because that fundamentally is our role. Thank you, Mr. Chair.