Thanks, Madam Chair. I can't let this one go without raising some concerns and issues that I think are well reflected in the report itself. But I like this idea of a statement of consistency for government bills. I think government has the resources, and they can and should be doing this. The difficulty is that the way the bill was drafted is that requirement for a statement of consistency was also imposed on Private Member's bills without any discussion/consultation with this side of the House. And I'll confirm this when the Minister's up in the witness chair when we get to it but just no thought whatsoever. Didn't even tell us.
That's just not how this place is supposed to work. And I guess we did get some advice about this that this might not be -- or that it would not be -- I can't really talk much about it but we do have certain privileges in this House, and one of them is the ability to bring forward Private Member's bills.
In my experience in eight years, it's very daunting for an individual MLA to bring forward a Private Member's bill. The cards are stacked against you right from the very start in terms of yeah, we can access the assistance from a law clerk but we don't have departments. We don't have resources at our disposal to go out and do consultations on bills, discussion papers, What We Heard reports. Private Members don't have any of those kind of resources. So now adding on a requirement for -- sorry, and that's just the start of it. You know, and if Cabinet doesn't support your Private Member's bill, quite frankly it's a very, very difficult task to try to get it through this House. I want to -- hats off to my colleague from Yellowknife North who managed to get a Private Member's bill through amending the Ombud Act with the support of Regular MLAs even though Cabinet wouldn't support it. But the cards are stacked against you right from the beginning as a Regular Member on Private Member's bills. We don't even have proper procedures for standing committees to review them. It's very difficult. I just -- you know, and having tried it a few times, it's a monument -- and you really have to have a lot of discipline and gumption to actually get up and try to do it but sometimes that's the only way change actually ever happens. This bill is going to impose one more barrier.
Now Regular Members are going to have to do a statement of consistency, work with the law clerk. And I think that statement of consistency, when it comes to at least one of the items in the declaration, FPIC, free prior informed consent. How can Regular MLAs honestly say that they have done consultation with Indigenous governments about FPIC for their bills coming forward? It's just an impossible barrier to get over. Absolutely impossible. But Cabinet just threw it in the bill. Didn't even bother to ask us. I'm really upset about this. That's not to say I don't support this. But we don't have the resources to do this kind of work but just thrown in by Cabinet, didn't bother to talk to us. One more hurdle for Private Member's bills. I think I'll leave it at that, Madam Chair. Thank you.