I'll reference again the June 15, 2017 joint statement made in the foyer at Centre Block, where we all pledged to work collaboratively, transparently and on a distinctions basis to codevelop legislation. We had a list of different things within the legislation, including distinct geographic, political, legislative and cultural contexts impacting language revitalization, maintenance and promotion. This had been preceded by a number of conversations led by the Canadian heritage minister, but also underpinned by the Prime Minister in the statements that he had made publicly about the ambition for an indigenous languages act.
All of that led to us agreeing to codevelop. We could have said no at that point. This is a really key point within this. There is an Inuit democracy in this country. Indigenous peoples have rights. We have the right to self-determination and self-government. The Government of Canada does not have exclusive domain on the political space that we occupy. We chose to come to this table. We chose to codevelop, and we chose to spend countless hours of our time at the national level and with our regions to provide our best positions that would practically implement the existing language rights we have and that would make a better future for Inuit. What we didn't have throughout the process was a response to our proposals nor, ultimately, a respect for any of the foundational principles that we had all agreed to within the bill you see that has passed first and second reading.
The preambular language talks about the importance of indigenous peoples, the importance of our language and the wrongs that have happened. Yes, it is meaningful to have that in a preamble of a piece of legislation. If an indigenous language commissioner was within the context of distinctions-based sections of an act and that was a component of an act, we probably would be thinking very differently about it and would be much more at ease with it.
For this act to basically be an act that creates a federal commissioner is far short of the expectations we had. In relation to codevelopment, we do not see codevelopment as the same as consultation. If it was truly codeveloped, there would be segments of this act that we could point to and say these were the segments that Inuit wanted within this.