Thank you, Mr. Chair. I agree with the intent of this motion, and this is not a hypothetical situation where there is a problem with the interaction between the challenges of rights issuances within municipal boundaries. This is a live issue. It has happened in Inuvik, and the committee was told about it in Inuvik. During the clause-by-clause, there wasn't support from the sponsoring Minister to resolve this issue the way that the committee thought would be a reasonable way to address it.

That being said, I think that there is a lot of merit to this, and the motion does more or less speak to itself, but what we have heard so far is that the concern is, when you are dealing with Indigenous governments and Indigenous organizations, that they have inherent rights that are protected by the charter and rights over lands and resources. Those rights need to be addressed in legislation and by government policy.

I don't disagree. That's really not a question; that's the reality. It is good that the legislation governs that, but when it comes to municipalities, they have the rights that we give them as a territorial government. They are creatures of statute, and if we change the statute to reflect a different role for them, especially in regards to solving this problem, it is not removing rights from someone else or an inappropriate issuance of rights. It is what we have decided is appropriate to strengthen local governance in the Northwest Territories.

Our Ministers are very, very proud of their times served in the bear pit over the years. All of our MACA Ministers talk about that, but we have to do more than just take their concerns. We actually have to address these fundamental issues of local governance when we have the opportunity to do so. I think that that is what the committee tried to do.

I already know that, most likely, the response to this motion will be that they will do the workarounds as best as possible, but sometimes these require going to court, which adds additional costs to both industry and municipalities, and when it comes to municipalities, it is taxpayers who foot that bill at the end of the day. If we can find any way to resolve that through legislation and through reasonable applications of things like restricted areas, I think that it is something that we ought to be doing.

Again, these are creatures of statute. By granting them additional powers to request things like a restricted area, it's not taking away rights from Indigenous governments, and it's not impinging on the rights of Indigenous governments. It's creating new authorities for municipalities to better exercise control over their boundaries and to preserve vital public infrastructure for public purposes.

I really hope we don't see another response like that and that we can change the government's perspective on these issues and start actually giving meaningful changes to our municipal partners. Thank you, Mr. Chair.