Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Some of the other Members have referenced last night. It was about six hours that we discussed this. At the clause-by-clause, there were another four and a half hours, and the committee itself spent days and days and days focusing on this act and how we could make it better. Even now, after all of that, as I stand here, I am still torn about whether or not I fully support this legislation, and there are a number of reasons for that.
There are a number of reasons to support the legislation. It is not, maybe, the world-class legislation that we were promised, but it does some very progressive things, like legislating benefit agreements. I have said this before; I think that what we do with this in the future will be used as a model elsewhere in Canada and, perhaps, around the world.
The problem with that is that the bill wasn't ready to be brought forward, and the benefits agreement section is a perfect example of that. It was not done, but, for whatever reason, it was brought forward. One of the Members mentioned free entry and the fact that, early on, there was no buy-in for free entry and the fact that the working group was able to get to the point where all of the Indigenous governments could agree on a system for entry shows how progressive this bill is.
I am concerned about the vagueness of certain points, that so much of this was left to regulations. There are big policy issues that should be discussed by the legislators and not left to regulations, which are usually reserved for things that are more technical. I am disappointed that there were major amendments proposed by the government on the floor of the House that bypassed the committee process, which is where the public is supposed to have their say into the legislation.
However, with all of that said, I do have faith in the people within the department who have been working on this. We have seen a lot of departmental officials come before us as a committee over the last four years, and I have always said that the mineral resources people are some of the best that we have in the government.
I feel like, if I support this bill, I would be rewarding bad behaviour on the part of Cabinet by bringing forward something when clearly it wasn't ready and clearly the proper processes weren't followed in terms of bringing forward amendments -- appropriate to democracy, not procedurally incorrect, but appropriate in the spirit of consensus government.
Mr. Speaker, even as I sit down here, I am not quite sure what I should do. Is this better legislation? Absolutely. Will it get to where it needs to be? I believe so, but, like I said, we have processes in place. Before I became an MLA, I saw lots of pieces of bad legislation, and I said, "I don't want to be part of that." Yet, here we are where there is legislation that is not fully formed and is not ready for prime time, and we are sitting here ready to approve it.
That is really why I am torn, Mr. Speaker. I guess we will all see, including me, how I vote on this. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.