Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As we understand it, the Interpretation Act permits certain steps to be taken to get people ready for a bill before it becomes operative. That time can be used to make sure the expertise and the guidance is in place. The business of preparing committee rules so the committee oper

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  A lot of things went right in this process, which I think the national chief has said could be usefully deployed to other issues. If you just look at the track record, according to the national chief's record, if you don't consult with the AFN the process goes off the rails; yo

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The Assembly of First Nations proposed what the federal government accepted and is now clause 5 of the bill. It provides that participation is strictly voluntary. The rights of no first nation are affected unless it chooses to participate. In a recent session, someone asked why a

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  With respect, I don't think this bill is going to free up resources to be used for other things. I think you need an aggregate increase in resources. What this bill will do is put demands on the justice department and INAC that they never had before. They have to turn around and

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You're allowed to go to the next stage, yes. It's constructive rejection.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, I don't think the question of whether there will be adequate budgets for any of these stages has been worked out yet. Now, I don't know what's going on in the inner recesses of the federal government. Maybe the game plan is there, and the money is there. I'm just saying from

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I haven't seen the statistics on the provinces, and I don't know whether anybody has actually compiled them. I believe there will be many cases in which claimants will not be able to get full satisfaction of their injustice because the province wasn't there. However, no federal

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In terms of whether negotiations should be interrupted if you want to get a specific point resolved, just as a philosophical matter that seems pretty sensible to me: you can have twenty issues on the table but one is the sticking point; should you have to hold up everything or ha

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As described, this philosophical concept seems perfectly sound to me.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Very quickly, on the question of independence, Bill C-6 was fundamentally flawed. It was actually statutorily biased in favour of the federal government. It gave the minister a say in appointments and gave no say to the AFN. With respect to delay, Bill C-6 actually statutorily p

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It doesn't set anybody's claim back as though it had never been filed. It is true that, for the purposes of the three-year clock, even if they've been in the system for ten years, some of them are going to have to wait for the full three-year clock to run out. The difficulty wi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Different people have different views. My own view is that leaving it the independent body to determine the prioritization was the appropriate way to go. Otherwise, without having everybody in the room, you've got AFN and the federal government deciding it's oldest claim first, o

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No. There are a lot of amendments I'd like to see, but there are no amendments that I would consider necessary for us to come out of this and say that this was a landmark achievement.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mediation can be extremely useful. The bill provides for it at the initial filing stage and provides the opportunity for it at the tribunal stage. If the question is mandatory, there are different views. I'm of the school that says mediation should never be made mandatory, beca

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think an effective judiciary means that you have a strong team. You need people who know a lot about business law. You need some people who know a lot about aboriginal law. Should everybody know about aboriginal law? Not necessarily. But if you have enough people on each prov