Mr. Chair, I move that Bill C-47 in clause 2 be amended by replacing line 14 on page 28 with the following:
exercise their powers and perform their duties and functions in conformity with it.
This hardens the requirement that all government bodies at all levels comply, operate, and conform to land use plans. That is simply, once again, an amendment that strengthens the use of the land use plan. If I could, I'll speak to that briefly.
Land use plans are sometimes not all that well received by government. That's my sense of it. If you look at the government of the Northwest Territories and its attitude toward the Dehcho interim land use plan, you will see that there's a great deal of anguish that these governments have over their loss of authority over land. That's what land use plans do. They give certainty to industry, to the people, about what is going to happen there, but it also takes away the discretion of government to make different choices. I have found over the time that I have worked on land use planning issues—probably for two decades—that governments are very reluctant to give up that kind of authority. We want to strengthen this language so that people who buy into and rely on this process of land use planning as a surety, whether it's industry, whether it's the public, get that, and they understand that the land use plan will give them surety.
That's why we're concerned about the language. We're concerned that the language gives that protection to people.