You won't believe this, but in 1986 I clerked at a court in the Northwest Territories and wrote a paper on custom adoption. For those who don't know what that is, it is the indigenous way of dealing with the adoption of children outside of the formalized process of the courts. Judge Sissons in the north, who was the first judge in the north—he was a white man's judge, if I can put it that way—recognized custom adoption. They've done it for years. I can't tell what the state of play is. I often get calls from the Northwest Territories about it.
I can't tell you all the roles that customs play, but there are other ways to do things, and thought has to be given to those ways. As you know, the idea of custom adoption is one area where they stepped outside the system because the system couldn't address the way people in the north dealt with adoptions, yet it was wholly in the interests of the child, wholly met the interests of the child. Forms weren't filled out, etc.
There's a lot to be learned. I can't tell you what lessons we should be taking out of that, but it's worth examining.