Thanks.
Thank you, witnesses, and welcome to our committee today. It is always a real pleasure to hear what our indigenous communities are doing across the country.
Let me go back for just a second. I've been on a national tour with another committee. We've been to all ends of the country, including spending eight hours in Iqaluit yesterday. I left there this morning in snow. As we travelled, we met with many indigenous groups across the country. It's always great hearing about the connections to land and the stewardship of land from the beginning of time.
To the witnesses who spoke this afternoon, you continue to reinforce that willingness and desire to work with other levels of government for the protection of these lands.
CPAWS, it's always a pleasure to hear about the work you're doing. Hopefully I'll get to you with my line of questioning, but I'm going to start with the other panellists.
Because I've been away with my other committee, I'm just getting up to speed on what we've been covering over the last three weeks in protected area discussions. In the work you're doing in Ontario and Quebec, I'm curious about the types of mechanisms that have been looked at and if you're into the mechanics of protected areas and what's going to work in your specific situations.
With this group, we're looking at a number of tools and mechanisms, so it could be things such as Environment Canada and wildlife refuges. Also, under Parks Canada there are national parks with various levels of co-management that are possible. There are marine conservation areas. There are perhaps other mechanisms to provide protections, such as this idea of indigenous protected areas, and we're really trying to figure out what that could look like.
I'd like to turn it over to you, perhaps, to our four panellists from the Moose Cree First Nation and the Grand Council of the Crees, for your about thoughts on what the ideal would be, or on where you're at in discussions about protecting your traditional lands, your homelands, and what we should be looking at in terms of tools and instruments to collaborate with you to achieve these objectives for long-term conservation. I hope that's clear.
Ms. Tétreault, would you like to start?