Thank you, Chair.
As I've shared in my past interventions on Bill C-61, these are two more amendments, PV-3 and PV-4, that have come directly from Six Nations of the Grand River. They're specific to the section of the bill that we heard from Chief Hill on significantly and, I understand, from many others in their testimony to this committee with respect to the insufficient current language of “best efforts”.
The current bill reads:
The Minister, in consultation and cooperation with a First Nation governing body, must make best efforts to ensure that access to clean and safe drinking water, whether from a public or private water system, is provided to all residents, occupants and users of buildings located on the First Nation lands of the First Nation.
Both PV-3 and PV-4 seek to remove the wording “must make best efforts” and simply replace them with the requirement that the minister “must ensure”. PV-3 includes more specificity about what a building is, including homes.
I'll note that MP Idlout has very similar amendments, all of which also get rid of that language, so it looks like members of the committee members have multiple options for preferred text to follow what they heard from Six Nations of the Grand River and many others to improve the language of this bill, to meet what we heard quite a bit, which is that a “best effort” to provide safe drinking water isn't good enough. We must follow through on that. This is a bill that gives the Government of Canada the opportunity to do that.
PV-4, which follows, is a briefer version of the same, which simply removes the words “make best efforts”.
As I said earlier, MP Idlout has also provided several other options. I'm sure she'll be speaking to you.
Thank you.