Merci, Madam la Presidente. Yeah, I want to thank the deputy chair for the comments to introduce the report. I serve on the committee and want to thank my colleagues for the work that we collectively put into the bill. And I also want to especially thank those that made written submissions and appeared before us in Whati, Fort Simpson, and Enterprise. We had a lot to think about as a result of the submissions that we received, the input that we got at the public hearings as well.
I also want to recognize that the work of the committee was actually hampered by the fires. We had to cancel and rejig our public engagement as a result of the fires, and we'd hoped to get to some other communities, but we just couldn't given the amount of time and the situation as it unfolded. There was quite a bit of public interest in this, I think as evidenced by the committee report, the submissions we received.
I also want to go on record as recognizing and supporting the legislative development protocol and the process convention that we now have in place for not just co-drafting of bills but collaborative review of bills as well. And this is really quite a historic occasion.
In a few minutes, we're going to have at least one representative, as I understand, from an Indigenous government's technical working group in the Chamber. That just hasn't happened before. So this is a historic occasion. And I do support the work that we undertook together.
I also want to recognize that this Bill 74 is much better than the bill that was introduced in the last Assembly known as Bill 44, The Forest Act. The big changes between 44 and 74 are that we see a much stronger integration of co-management into the bill that's now before us, stronger provisions for Indigenous rights, and certainly better flow and organization of the bill itself and the processes laid out for forest management and fire prevention and protection. And a lot of this, of course, was the work of the technical working group before the bill even came to us. So I also want to thank the Indigenous governments that participated in that process and had their staff attend numerous technical working group meetings.
At the end of the day, 22 amendments proposed by committee were actually accepted by the Minister and the technical working group. And I'm very proud of that work, and I think it's a clear demonstration of the collaboration that took place.
A lot of the work that was done on those 22 amendments really related to public participation in forest management. And, really, that's a public government responsibility. It's not the responsibility of Indigenous governments. That should have been our government doing that work. I would point out for the record, as well, that most of those issues were raised in the last Assembly with Bill 44. They were raised again during the delayed and very short public engagement carried out by the department on Bill 74 during this Assembly. And, in my opinion, they could and should have been better addressed in the bill itself. That being said, we did get 22 amendments and I think that those do reflect the concerns that were largely raised around public participation.
I am going to have some questions for the Minister when the witnesses are here. But there are some lessons that I think we can learn from this, and clearly we just ran out of time at the end where I think we could have achieved some further small changes to the bill in the interest of working together and ensuring good public participation, transparency, and accountability, but we simply ran out of time.
I think the next time around it would be very important to share more information with standing committee throughout the co-drafting process. Nothing was really shared with committee during the entire process, nothing. And I don't think that left committee in a good place when we received the bill. And I would point out, you know, the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, as much as I may seem to pick on them sometimes, they did actually share the policy considerations documents. I think it was, like, 500 or 600 pages, in a bit of a docu-dump with standing committee, on the development of the Mineral Resources Act regulations. But we really got nothing from the department in terms of information prior to the bill landing on our docket so to speak.
I think we can -- future standing committees can and should meet more often with the technical working group representatives. We had two meetings with them, and I think they were very helpful in understanding a number of new approaches and wording and so on in the bill, but I think some earlier collaboration would also be helpful. At the same time, I fully recognize that departments and Ministers have to hold the pen on this, and that's their work. But keeping committee in the loop as that unfolds is, I think -- people are going to see on recommendations on that.
Lastly, I guess I want to say too that there is certainly a need for departments to have additional resources when it comes to doing public engagement on a bill like this. That's not to criticize the department in any way. They just needed more resources, in my opinion, to actually do a better job on public engagement. And there's no reason why the public engagement cannot happen while the co-drafting is going on. In this case, the public engagement happened after the co-drafting was almost finished and was very -- it was delayed and very brief, and the input that was received I don't believe it really -- it was properly reflected in the bill. So I think that in the future, departments have to get additional resources when they carry out public engagement on resource management bills. And that has been the case in this assembly with the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment where they did secure additional resources, and I think other departments have to do the same thing.
I think, Madam Chair, that's all the comments I have but I will have questions when the Minister appears with the witnesses when we get to the clause-by-clause review, and I will be bringing forward a series of motions to amend the bill that reflect the work of the committee during our clause by clause back on August the 11th. Thanks very much, Madam Chair.