In the east we have 18 pre-Confederation treaties of peace, friendship, and trade, not land claims or land succession treaties.
I understand Mr. Sopuck's concern about private property, but in the east those lands are still Mi'kmaq lands, Maliseet lands, Passamaquoddy lands. There is a discussion that needs to happen about the use of lands, and the rights to those lands, waters, and resources.
Certainly we are very much for conservation and sustainable use of those resources. We want to be a part of that discussion, but it also has to include the discussion and recognition that those lands are still our lands through treaty and have never been ceded. We have people who have come and lived among us that we have welcomed to Ka-na-da, “the place there”.
There is a place here for everybody in Ka-na-da. That's the philosophy that we have taken, and that's the hand that we still extend, which is on the Nova Scotia crest, the hand extended between the settler and the Mi'kmaq.