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?