Thank you, Madam Chair. As the Member said, this is essentially the motion that was moved by committee. I supported it then, and I understand the Member's going to move to a couple motions that were already essentially moved by committee. I don't want to speak to the details of them. We spoke to them at committee, and the Minister responded. I guess I want to talk a bit larger about the process we're in now.
All of these motions and the motions we move, I don't think affect Aboriginal rights in any ways. I don't believe they go to the heart of what the technical working group tried to accomplish in the Forest Act. I do view them as kind of minor amendments putting obligations on a public government to be more public.
That being said, I can't find myself supporting them because I think it kind of undermines this entire process. We were fortunate to have a technical working group and a Minister work with us on committee to respond to a number of motions and make a number of amendments to the bills. And then I think now if the legislature essentially vetoes that process and says thanks for the negotiation, we're going to do it anyway, it kind of undermines everything we tried to accomplish here. And I think it puts the Minister in a tough spot where then at third reading, he has a bill that was not the bill negotiated at the technical working group and may, in fact, if, you know, these were substantive enough, just withdraw the whole thing and say I can't vote in favour of a different piece of legislation that I didn't concur with and I got instructions not to concur with.
Now, I know that in some way is kind of limiting the powers of this House, but to me it becomes a political calculation of when we should move motions that fail that committee again at third reading or Committee of the Whole. And to me, that is in very rare circumstances should we, as Regular Members who hold the majority, kind of usurp the negotiation process in committee. If that's what we're planning on doing, I think we're better off just reporting the bill not ready instead of kind of going around. And so that's my concern with passing all of these, is it then puts kind of an emergency meeting has to happen with the Minister and technical working group and say hey, you know those things you didn't concur with are now in the bill; where did you stand? Should I still be doing this? And god forbid, we then don't pass the Forest Act for the third Assembly in a row.
So I am very hesitant to move motions that did not get concurred with at the committee stage if the Minister was cooperative and if the department worked with us, and that is exactly what happened today. We had a lot of back and forth. We heard the reasons they didn't concur with them. I didn't always agree, but they were rational enough that it didn't cause me to think that we had to bring this motion and potentially undermine the entire process and all future negotiations on bills like this. So I can't be supporting these. Thank you, Madam Chair.