Thank you very much for your submissions and comments. If I can summarize what I think I'm hearing and see whether or not you can mark me on this.... You're talking, first, about—I think you said four or five times—a sense of urgency with respect to this and the need to get this through by the end of June.
You've talked about the reason for that urgency: it's that no languages are safe and you don't want to move on to uncertainties. I think I heard that quite clearly.
You also said that no legislation is perfect and nothing is, but you felt there was a certain amount of agreement with the legislation here.
In previous testimony that we've heard, we've looked at some of those issues that should be looked at and/or changed.
Clauses 1 through 11, as I read them, are more value statements. They're the principles. They talk a little about organizational structure, but they lay out the broad framework of what we want to achieve. They're referring to the United Nations' UNDRIP, the Constitution and a number of issues that go through that.
Clauses 12 through 30 talk about the office of the commissioner of indigenous languages and the directors that will come with that. I think that's where I would see a lot of the flexibility or a lot of the interpretation. You've made reference a number of times to being able to respond to the local nuances and needs of the geographic area and the people who live in those areas.
Then, I think clauses 31 through 42 talk about a shared responsibility of the implementation of that and the need for flexibility.
I'm fairly accurate to this point. I'm asking if you would then agree that the values that are reflected are appropriate values, that they do provide the foundation and that the office of the commissioner will have the ability to make those decisions. While we don't know who the commissioner or the directors will be, we believe they will be representative of indigenous communities and be from indigenous communities and be able to do that.
My concern with legislation in the past has been that we put too much into the legislation, and we're not able to respond to the nuances and needs as things change. I'm just testing whether or not you would agree, or would correct me in those areas where I'm seeing this incorrectly, or whether or not that is a fair interpretation of what I've heard in your testimony.