Here's one of the problems. For us as native people, we've referred to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act. On the one hand, you say, “Oh yes, we'd like to consult with you”, but then you give us no resources to do that.
Then you end up with this mound of paper on your desk that people want your consultation on or knowledge about and no way to give it, because you can't put the time to it. What I would suggest.... I'd like solutions rather than just complaints about it.
One of the things I would say to you is that, again, I look across the border now, because we sit in Canada and the United States. The United States doesn't always approach everything the right way, but sometimes they do. Their approach to first nations has been that any first nation in the United States who can pick up those responsibilities of the Environmental Protection Act in the U.S. is treated like a state, and funding is given to that first nation in order for it to carry out those responsibilities. What happens, then, is that you end up actually protecting the vulnerable populations of native people.
It doesn't help with.... I'll give you one example: the Vietnamese people who came to Toronto, lived in Toronto, and were eating fish out of the Toronto harbour. It didn't help them because they are a vulnerable population, but really, nobody knew they were doing that. When we were doing our health studies, we had a number of friends who were Vietnamese who came to our health study and asked us to look at them too. I think that on the identification of that, sometimes first nations people are in that line and are friends with those people, and we can start bringing them in.
It's like I said. I don't think every first nation in Canada could pick up this responsibility immediately, but I believe that you have probably 10 communities across the country that could.