Kevin O'Reilly

Merci, Monsieur le President. I would like recognize one of the pages, Kole Lizotte. I believe he has a special someone who might work here as well. But also I believe Frame Lake resident Audrey Henderson is, I think behind me, is here as well and I want to welcome her to the Assembly. Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. I've got a couple questions if I can. Is this a onetime increase, or is this a permanent increase to the borrowing limit? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I just a few things I guess I want to say that having sat eight years on this side of the House, one of the few points of leverage that Regular MLAs have is in budgets and both on the capital and O and M side. And, you know, I think Regular MLAs can and should and do use that leverage to negotiate what we believe sometimes should be priorities for our residents as well. Sometimes we maybe have a slightly different take than our colleagues on the other side, but that's how consensus government is supposed to work. People don't elect us here to agree with each...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Look, I've already said that I agree in principle with this, and I will take issue with the Premier's comments. This is not about me trying to exclude Indigenous governments from getting to shared decisionmaking agreements. This is about trying to find out how Regular MLAs can have a say in agreements before they're finalized. And it's about MLAs doing their job. I'm just not prepared to give Cabinet a bank cheque, I guess. So that's what I think this is about. But in any event, Madam Chair, I do want to move to a motion if I could.

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...

Yeah, thanks. That sound pretty good to me. I would prefer having a little bit more meat on this nonderogation clause, so to speak, that makes sure that, you know, we support the land resources and selfgovernment agreements that have already been negotiated, and there's the ability to add more. So I think this is good language. And it's a little more specific than just section 35 rights. It brings it down to our situation in the Northwest Territories, so. But it includes those so, yeah, I agree with this. I support it. We've done it before, and I think we should do it again. Thanks, Madam...

Yeah, no, thank you for that. Yeah, I think we're not like a lot of the governments that the Premier described that have party systems. This is supposed to be a consensus government. So the way that the bill has been drafted now and I think this was a helpful addition was that, you know, Regular MLAs will now at least get notice if negotiations a Minister's authorized to begin negotiations on a shared decisionmaking agreement. But the only time there's no requirement there's nothing in the bill about what happens with those agreements other than they're going to get published at the end...

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. So this is an interesting feature of this bill is that the Cabinet will authorize individual Ministers to go off and negotiate something called shared decisionmaking agreements with Indigenous governments. It's also part of BC's legislation to implement the declaration. I think this that's a good thing. I support it in principle. But I do think that Cabinet dropped the ball in terms of not adopting the approach that BC has of actually making that delegation of authority or at least not providing notice to the public that that's going to happen. What has been added...

Thanks, Madam Chair. I just want to understand. I believe this language comes from is repeated in at least a couple of other pieces of GNWT legislation. And can I ask the law clerk to confirm that for me, please.

Yeah, thanks, Madam Chair. Yeah, I respect all the comments I heard. You know, this motion does not require or enable elected MLAs to participate in any way in the action plan committee. It allows for a representative to be there on the terms and conditions that are set by the committee itself. This is not about interfering or trying to influence the process. It's about understanding what's happening there and how it will change the legislative branch of government. This is not about the executive branch of government. This is the plan, when it's done, will change the legislative branch of...