Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the comments you're making about concerns over adding layers. I mean, the legislation could have been simplified and we could have been working at drinking water much quicker, but it's much more complicated.
When we get more complicated, there's the comment that maybe some nations don't have the ability to work through the process of the regulations, but in my mind, if you don't make that attempt at the regulations.... I've been around a long time. I've seen legislation provincially and federally—a lot—but we all know what it comes down to is the regulations. The regulations are the pieces that implement. That's a critical piece.
If we're going to have this piece of legislation with some other parts in it, I think the regulations are a critical piece. At least you need to be able to say to each nation...to give them the opportunity to say yea or nay to wanting into that, or if there's a way that they can do it through different associations to say, “This is a template that others have used. Would you like to be in on this conversation?”
You may not have developed them yourself. That happens a lot in sharing when people work on regulations. I've seen it a lot of times where smaller communities just don't have those resources, but they depend on their associations or they work with their neighbours to develop that skill set to work with in response to regulations.
In my mind, if the legislation is built with the layers that are in it, we don't want people at the end of it—a nation—to say, “I didn't get a chance to have my say. I didn't get a chance to react to those regulations.” This is a once-in-a-lifetime piece of legislation, and that, to me, says it's important that everyone has their say. I think there are ways to support all nations in different mechanisms so that they feel they've had their input.
I understand your thoughts on creating another layer and all the bureaucracy that may go with it, but I think we have a lot of nations in this country that are really looking at this as something that's going to make a change in their nations, and the regulations are how it's implemented.