Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for that opportunity. When I look at these types of issues, I have to go back to what the Supreme Court said in terms of “What is that community?” What I mean by this is, look at whether you're in an urban reserve or close to an urban setting, where your ability to have land—to put aside or return to reserve—is very limited.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I really do believe that government and first nations should sit down and have the discussion on what I described earlier on, where we're both equal partners sitting at the table. Then we can start discussing what the issues are. You look internationally at places like Pakistan and others.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would say that, yes, it needs to be looked at and revamped. In British Columbia, when you're talking about the province, the majority of it is unceded. One option is to negotiate through the B.C. treaty process, which our people are adamantly opposed to. The other is to seek declaration of title.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We're working fairly well with a lot of municipal and regional governments, but there's still the whole issue of looking at legislation regarding such things as you brought up—such things as resources, or what we call our natural capital. That's salmon. That's all the other things that are found in nature, that we're dependent on.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm going to need more than five minutes. I think one of the biggest ones is with government and the development of such things as socio-economic analysis. You know, they don't really show what the impacts are on reserve. They don't show conclusively what the social problems are, or others.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, I do. If you look at what some first nations have actually done with trust money or monies generated from on-reserve resources, you don't have to look further than Peace Hills Trust. It started out with around $196 million, and today that bank is worth just shy of $1 billion.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll do that really fast. One of the issues of that was, for us, that this review would happen. They tried commissions and also the McKenna-McBride. I want people to look at the B.C. Indian Reserves Mineral Resources Act of 1943. This act is a prime example of colonialism at its finest.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  My name is Byron Louis. I'm the chief of the Okanagan Band. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm sitting in Syilx territory in the province of British Columbia. I'm not going to be covering the same ground as what was spoken on earlier about that, but I'd like to really talk about the actual core and foundation, if we are talking about restitution of land to first nations, Inuit and Métis.