Maybe I can be more clear on my experience. I get the capacity funding, but what it was, really, was forwarding money to us for the long term to protect land, and it was in two pots. One was a finite pot for economic development, which we spent, and the other one was ongoing funding for environmental management from our office, but that actually sterilized the land forever. We tried to go back for exemptions, and we couldn't get them. We're effectively tying the hands of future indigenous leaders.
To go back to my point, I thought it was very unfair to use that for a band that had.... Don't get me wrong. We have a lot of money now. We have forestry money and LNG money. That is not an issue for us now, but when we look back on some of those lands we protected, we can't undo it.
In my eyes, what I'm seeing now is the same formula being used. That will tie the hands of future first nations leaders, who might not see the inventory of opportunity on the land base. I'm talking about energy, mining and forestry. The governments, the ENGOs and the non-profits came to us and promised us the moon on tourism opportunities, and none of them have materialized.
In fact, they all left. They took the money they got from the federal government and the provincial government. They opened up big offices in San Francisco and Vancouver, and we got nothing. In fact, all we got from the provincial government was $15,000 a year to manage protected areas. That example is living right there, right now, under the coast opportunity funds in B.C.
Is there any appetite from the government to ensure this process doesn't happen again?