Thank you. Mr. Wheler.

Thank you. Member for Frame Lake.

Yeah, thanks. I appreciate those comments. I guess what I was hoping to hear is probably a little bit more in line with what the standing committee report talks about in terms of things like don't wait until the very end before you carry out your public engagement; find ways to share information while you're working through different parts of a bill or issues. I don't think there's anything that would, you know, prevent I hope, ways of sharing more information as the bill's being developed and starting some of the public engagement earlier on it to get input on specific areas or issues moving forward. The committee report also speaks to the need to make sure that departments are resourced for this activity. So I guess I really haven't heard any of that. So I'm not sure what lessons were learned as a result of this bill in terms of public engagement.

In any event, I know that there's a government-wide policy that this Cabinet put in place, and it's buried in a document -- if I can find the name of it here. Oh yes, here it is. Cabinet Operational Guidelines, appendix 4.11 of the Executive Council Submissions Handbook. And basically, that policy, if I -- or guidelines as they're called, basically gives Ministers total discretion as to when and where and how they would engage the public on policy publication and comment periods for regulations. So I'm not sure that that is a great model, quite frankly. And, you know, people have heard me on the floor of the House criticizing this or suggesting improvements already to it. So this is not the time and place to do that, Madam Chair, but I don't think that that works in all circumstances.

So I guess a couple of other features of this bill, and we've talked about this before, this is not a normal bill. This is a bill that is co-developed with Indigenous governments. And that's a great thing. It's developed pursuant to the Legislative Development Protocol. It's also the first bill through the process convention that we -- where we agreed to collaboratively review a bill, and not just with Ministers and departments but with Indigenous governments. That's a good thing. I support that. But we also got to learn lessons from this, and I think one of the lessons I learned, and we heard in submissions, was that the public engagement wasn't great and that we need to find ways to improve this. And, you know, the deputy minister even said that we got to make sure that the Minister has the ability to make regulations quickly in the case of an emergency. That's not in the bill. It doesn't even appear in the bill. So in any event, Madam Chair, I do want to move a motion to amend and add a new clause about public engagement on regulations. May I do that?

Yes, thank you. Go ahead, Member for Frame Lake.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move that Bill 74 be amended by adding the following after clause 128:

128.1. (1) Subject to subsection (2), before making regulations under this Act, the Minister shall

(a) ensure that there is an opportunity for public engagement by

(i) publishing a copy of the proposed regulations on a website maintained by the Government of the Northwest Territories, and.

(ii) ensuring that a reasonable period of time has been allotted for receiving feedback on the proposed regulations; and

(b) consider any feedback provided on the proposed regulations under paragraph (a).

(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the Minister is satisfied that the proposed regulations have been prepared in response to an emergency.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. The motion is in order. To the motion.

Question has been called. Member for Frame Lake.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. This is one of the hills I guess I wanted to die on in this Assembly. Maybe it seems like I'm trying to die on every single administrative trivia. That's not the case, but this is one that Members on this side of the House have continually raised, is the need for better public engagement and communications from our Cabinet colleagues. And I think this is really extended to the issue of regulations in particular.

In this Assembly, we did amend -- and I did get concurrence from the Minister. The Child Daycare Act was amended to require the Minister in that case to provide draft regulations to child care providers. And that was because of their interest in trying to move forward with the significant changes to that area. So there's a case where a Cabinet Minister went above and beyond the Cabinet operational guidelines, and we incorporated that into the bill. The Minister concurred with it. The Minister's smiling because he knows he did it. So we've done it before. And, you know, I -- this, as I said before, this is another -- this is an example of a -- this is not normal legislation. People have asked for this ability to look at the regulations. The NGOs asked that. NWTAC has asked that. This is in response to legitimate requests that we got as a committee. So, I'm not making this stuff up. This is the way that it should happen.

In response to the concerns from -- that we heard from the department and -- department, that's why they added subsection (2) here to this so that the Minister doesn't have to go through a public engagement process if the Minister satisfied, in the Minister's own opinion, that an emergency situation exists. So don't have to do public engagement if there's an emergency. So covered that one with this as well.

So I'm hoping that -- although I haven't had a lot of support so far with a number of the motions I've moved, that Members on this side who are Regular Members, we've pushed for this before in other bills; I don't know why we wouldn't do it on this bill as well. Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thank you. To the motion. Member for Yellowknife North.

Yeah, I'm sorry, everyone. I get where the Member's coming from. I know the government now has a standard kind of period for reviewing regulations. But I view this as no different than annual reports or mandatory legislative reviews. What happens is you get -- as a bill comes through the Assembly, you get sometimes these clauses are added, they have different wording, and then you find yourself where the government just has different obligations across a number of Acts. And when you look at them all, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's just that one Member happened to get agreement from the Minister on, you know, child daycare and didn't get it on, you know, something like Financial Administration Act or another very important piece of legislation. So we just -- it doesn't actually lead to the consistency that the government should improve its public engagement on regulation process. They should do that as it applies to everything. They should improve their public reporting. They should do that everywhere. They should improve the way we review statutory reviews. But I don't see to do it one off on each piece of legislation that come up every 20 to 30 years. It just leads to inconsistencies. Thank you.

Thank you, Member. To the motion.

Question has been called. All those in favour? All those opposed? Abstentions? The motion is defeated.

---Defeated

Clauses 129 to 139, does committee agree?

Committee, to the bill as a whole, does committee agree that Bill 74, Forest Act, is now ready for third reading?

Thank you, committee. Does committee agree that this concludes our consideration of Bill 74, the Forest Act?

Thank you. And I want to thank our witnesses for being here before us. This is the first co-drafted bill under -- of the new process convention on bills drafted pursuant to the Intergovernmental Council Legislative Development Protocol. And it's been an honour to chair Committee of the Whole as this is kind of a historical moment that we've had this. And so, again, thank you for being here and, you know, we had lots of little learning curves there and we'll, hopefully, in the future we'll be able to straighten those out. Thank you for appearing before us. Sergeant-at-arms, you may escort the witnesses from the Chamber.

Committee, we've agreed to consider Bill 78, Waste Reduction and Resource Recovery Act. I will ask the Minister of Environment and Climate Change to introduce the bill. Minister of ECC.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I'm here to present Bill 78, Waste Reduction and Resource Recovery Act.

I would like to thank the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment for review of this bill. Based on the feedback from committee, several amendments were made to the bill before us today.

Bill 78 presents a significant step forward in modernizing the Waste Reduction and Recovery Act. This legislation will allow the GNWT to use the most current tools to effectively manage recycling and waste reduction in the NWT. New tools include

• an expanded scope for advisory committees;
• enabling extended producers responsibility program;
• the ability to declare waste disposable bans for specific materials;
• expand authority to delegate administrative functions and enter into agreements;
• provisions enabling the GNWT to select waste facility operators based on competitive process, clarify requirements on environment funded contribution and distribution; and
• update enforcement inspection provisions.

These changes were identified through the development of the NWT Waste Management Strategy, which includes input from individuals, organizations, businesses, and governments across the NWT. Targeted engagement on the proposed changes occurred throughout 2022, and the public engagement on the legislation was conducted December 2022 through January 2023.

That concludes my opening remarks. I look forward to answering any questions Members may have. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. Minister, would you like to bring witnesses into the Chamber?