Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. So this is a -- 2.1 here is a new part of the bill that was added as a result of the collaborative review we undertook. And I think one of the issues that we found -- and this was raised in the last version of the bill in the last Assembly. It was raised again during the public engagement on this bill. I said this in the House at second reading. You know, what is the relationship of forest management as established under this bill, what's the relationship with land use planning?
We have forest ecosystem management plans. We have monitoring and research that's being carried out. And then research -- sorry, licenses and permits that could be issued for different kind of forest activities. How does land use planning relate to forest permits and licenses, the activities that would be -- could be authorized under this? And that could include cutting, timber mills, all kinds of stuff. So, you know, we added this in to make it clearer to some extent that permits and licenses issued under the Forest Act really need to be consistent with land use plans that have already been developed and put in place. And that's what this section says.
The one area that's a little bit uncertain still is zoning bylaws. And zoning bylaws are the tool or instrument that local governments use to implement their community plans. Community plans usually set out in kind of a high level what the community's trying to do and achieve in the next 5, 10, 20 years, whatever they decide, you know, goals, objectives, what they're trying to do, how they could reach economic development objectives or socioeconomic objectives, you know, what they want their community to look like. They do that at a fairly high level. The next -- but the most meaningful way in which they tend to implement those is through zoning bylaws. And those are pretty prescriptive. They divide up the community into different zones and say what things are allowed to happen here, what things are not allowed to happen, when sometimes they have to go back to council to check things. So zoning bylaws are the ways in which land use plans are actually implemented at the community level. And, you know, some of the regional plans that have been developed under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act have zoning as well and permitted, not permitted uses. So that's how they do it even at the regional level. But for community governments, they implement their plans through zoning bylaws.
The problem is zoning bylaws are not mentioned in this section. So I want to ask the Minister, is GNWT going to interpret this part of the legislation in a way that includes zoning bylaws made by community governments, which they prepare these things under GNWT legislation. There's a requirement that they have zoning bylaws. So will GNWT interpret this in a way that they will include zoning bylaws in legally approved land use plans? Thank you, Madam Chair.