Merci, Monsieur le President. This is a private members' public bill that would change existing legislation to allow for the sharing of mining, oil and gas royalty information with Regular MLAs and Indigenous governments. A private Members' public bill is a bill that seeks to establish a new act or amend an existing act but is introduced by a Member who is not in Cabinet.

This bill which is the second private Members' bill brought forward by myself during my time as an MLA is designed to allow the Minister of Industry, Tourism, and Investment to share royalty information, subject to any confidentiality restrictions on its further disclosure. The information could be made available to regular MLAs and Indigenous governments for their use in the development and evaluation of policy.

The private Members' bill does not seek to create new powers with respect to mining and petroleum activities, nor create any new regulatory structure to government performance. The private members' bill does not allow MLAs or Indigenous governments to access any proprietary or financial information held by the private sector that has not been disclosed to the Government of the Northwest Territories.

The bill does not require or allow for the public disclosure of royalty information. With passage of this bill, MLAs and Indigenous governments would finally have access to information essential to development of regulations under the Mineral Resources Act. This is a first step towards greater transparency in reporting of the monies paid to our Government for resource development. Much more work remains to be done to ensure NWT residents know what the revenues are from development so we can better manage these resources for today and future generations. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.