Thanks, Mr. Chair. I want to concur with what the chair said. First off, what we heard: we heard from Indigenous governments. We heard from municipal governments. We heard from industry. We heard from NGOs, individual citizens. There is a lot of interest in the significant public policy matters that have been shunted off to regulations through these bills. A lot of the important substance matters of public interest are going to be developed by Ministers or Cabinet. There is no requirement in the bills for any public participation.
Committee tried, through amending the bills, different kinds of processes, whether it was the wording from the MVRMA to require some kind of consultation. We tried to include authority for the Minister, enabling authority, not requirements, to enter into agreements with Indigenous governments to allow for collaboration moving forward. We tried the wording from the Petroleum Resources Act, the Oil and Gas Operations Act, the gazetting process. We tried everything that we could think of to get some agreement or some commitment from Cabinet on what this process would look like. All we got were some intentions to involve people in the future, intentions. Our government shouldn't operate on intentions.
We came up with lots of options. There was nothing from Cabinet. There still is no government-wide approach to development of regulations. I have heard excuses like, "We are going to leave it to the 19th Assembly," or "We can't do that." All I have heard is excuses so far. I still don't understand nor does the public understand what the process is going to look like moving forward.
We tried lots of different options. This is the last-ditch effort on the part of the committee to try to get this Cabinet to actually come up with a process. So far, they have completely failed. As I say, this is a last-ditch effort to try to get a response on what that process is going to look like going forward. They can snicker and laugh all they want, but we came up with the ideas. They have not. Thanks, Mr. Chair.