Merci, Monsieur le President. I made a statement almost two years ago about the lack of a clear process for developing regulations by this government. I had to dig deep, very deep - in fact, to appendix 4.11 of the executive council submissions handbook - to find anything public after repeated requests to the Premier on this subject. In that three-page appendix that was signed off by the Premier on March 11th, 2021, there are some vague guidelines on leaving virtually all of the discretion over any public and even standing committee engagement around regulations to each individual Minister and agency.

This appendix called Cabinet operational guidelines, publishing proposed regulations, was finally posted publicly in April 2021 with no public announcement and no consultation or engagement with standing committee before the fact. I contrast that with Cabinet taking more than a year to negotiate the legislative development protocol with the intergovernmental council to develop regulations and legislation. This came after repeated calls for involvement in the development of regulations and post-devolution resource management legislation from the last Assembly that left most of the details to the regulations and whims of future Ministers with no checks or balances.

I will give this Cabinet some credit as there have been a little over ten public engagement opportunities on proposed regulations since the beginning of this Assembly. These can be seen on the "Have your Say" web pages. However the first, and perhaps only time in this Assembly when a standing committee recommended public engagement on a proposed regulation, the response from Cabinet and the Education Minister was "no".

The Standing Committee on Social Development recommended, based on public input, that the Department of Education, Culture and Employment undertake public consultation to develop prescribed emergency provisions under the Employment Standards Act. The department went ahead on its own and took three months to develop these so-called emergency regulations that did not come into force for another months. Four months is hardly the kind of emergency timeline that should have precluded public engagement.

I will have questions later today for the Premier on how our government is going to put into practice its open government policy with regard to regulation-making going forward and public engagement. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.