Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have been thinking a lot about this, and clearly, there needs to be a division between the legislative branch and the executive branches of government. That is how democracies are supposed to work. Someone is supposed to hold the pen, and somebody else is supposed to take it and conduct a review of it.
These are very significant matters with a lot of public interest. A lot of time and effort went into the development of these bills. Through our process here in consensus government, standing committees get legislative proposes that outline general subject matter so that we can try to work together, or at least understand what is coming through. Some of these were very large, complex pieces of legislation, and I think that it was very difficult for committee to understand the policy discussion and policy decisions that had gone into the drafting and the bill as it arrived on our desk for review.
Much earlier in the process, when committee had raised some concerns and issue about some of the bills that came through, the kinds of responses that we got weren't very helpful. Things like, "Well, we'll take it to the technical working group," or "We'll take it to the Indigenous governments to see what they think." That's great, but I want to know what the Cabinet position is. What is Cabinet going to take to the table in discussing and negotiating this, and should Regular MLAs or the standing committees actually have any kind of role in that or, at least, an understanding of what some of those issues are, how they played out, and how decisions were arrived at? I am still grappling with how we can do that.
The best thought that committee could come up with is that Ministers and standing committee need to sit down and talk about this before things get completely off the rails. I think that what happened last night is an example of when things do go off the rails.
This is an effort to try to ensure that committees are kept at least informed of what is going on and are in a better position to help review the bill and provide constructive feedback and so on. That probably needs to be worked out, maybe, on a case-by-case basis. I think that it worked better with some of the bills than others, and I think that this is an effort to suggest that, if there's an understanding at the beginning of the process, that is going to be better for everybody. Thanks, Mr. Chair.