Kevin O'Reilly

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I would request a recorded vote. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. That's great. I'm glad to hear that the Minister's department didn't actually hear any concerns about that one when they were preparing to work on the bill. This committee did hear that. We have raised that. Here is another policy issue that was live, raised to the committee, about how they would like to know what's going on within their boundaries. This is consistent with having good neighbour relationships, all that sort of thing that the Minister talked about in his opening remarks, but there's no provision in the bill.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to move into the motion if I...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I am kind of in this awkward situation where I wanted to get some clarification about what the intent of the registry was and so on and why the list of intended work, at least in the Minister's and the Minister's staff's view, could not be put on the registry. This motion would require that it be put on the public registry, subject to the confidentiality requirements in the act. There are confidentiality requirements even in this section of the bill. There are other provisions further down in part 8 of the bill. I have heard concerns around that industry might be worried...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I don't accept all of the reasoning there from the Minister, but he also neglected to indicate that 24.7 here would allow the Minister to create zones on the Minister's own initiative. Is that correct? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for that. I appreciate that, and I think that it shows that Minister followed through with his commitment. That's great, and I think that these sort of changes should and probably do require consultation with Indigenous governments. Can the Minister indicate whether there were any discussions with industry on these changes? Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. This is the first time I have seen this. I am not a Member of the committee, and having these sort of motions put before Members without seeing them, without even knowing what they're about, and then asking us to vote on it, I don't find this very helpful. I would appreciate an explanation from the Minister what this is about, because I have no idea. Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. So, if I was to rewrite this, this is the one place where "polluter pays" should actually be found, and there is no reference to "polluter pays" in the purpose section. Can someone from the department explain to my why that is the case?

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I support the motion. I think that at least it leaves the door open to the option of making further changes, improvements, to Cabinet's plan. This is a made-by-Cabinet approach. There are no details. It will be the next Minister of Finance who determines what the details are, in terms of rebates, grants, how the money is spent, and so on. All of that is going to be set out in regulation that none of us may have any say in, not even the public. I am fine with leaving the door open to the chance to develop a better plan.

We have talked about what has been done in the Yukon with...

Yes, thanks, Mr. Chair. I detect a certain amount of frustration here. This is not as if committee has not tried to work with Ministers, with Cabinet, to get to some sort of understanding of how regulations are going to be made in the future, given that, most of these bills, all of the details are off into the future. So, as my colleague said, we tried to adopt language from the MVRMA requiring consultation. We even tried to add permissive language to allow the Minister to enter into agreements with Indigenous governments moving forward on how to co-draft regulation or engage Indigenous...

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I would like to turn to clause 2.1, if I may, which is the purpose section. I would like an explanation from the department as to why the department's Land Use and Sustainability Framework and even its own Lands Establishment Policy, which is a policy that was signed off by the Premier, Cabinet-level approval, why it appears that some of those principles were not incorporated into the original bill, which did not even have a purpose statement? Thanks, Mr. Chair.