Respectfully, Mrs. Atwin has tried to characterize this as if I just have some misunderstanding of what's going on, and otherwise everything's fine.
I note that, in reality, the Assembly of First Nations, the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council and the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador accused Ottawa of negligent management of the program and called for an audit to be done. In fact—and I'm quoting the article—“the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami called the workarounds a form of identity theft and the 'next stage of colonization.'” According to prominent indigenous leaders in Canada, there are serious problems with this program. This isn't just Garnett Genuis or the Conservative Party raising concerns. These are indigenous leaders who have repeatedly publicly called for further action on and investigation into this. We are using the ability we have, as elected members of Parliament, to magnify their voices and concerns.
I think four meetings are a reasonable place to start, and we'll see where we are after that. We want to hear from ministers and elected leaders of indigenous organizations, as well as from individual entrepreneurs and businesses that are individual users of the program. Obviously, they have different kinds of testimonies to bring us. The representative organizations of indigenous people will be able to speak to broader community impacts, and particular entrepreneurs will be better positioned to speak to the experience of the entrepreneur engaging the program. Recognizing that we want to hear from—at least I think we want to hear from—those elected indigenous leaders, as well as entrepreneurs and people on the Government of Canada side responsible for this program, I think we can't be too limited in the number of meetings we have.
Recall that I was the one who initially proposed a subcommittee, which would allow us more time and flexibility to have multiple studies going on at once. Members didn't want to go that way—that's fine, but I think we need to recognize these realities.
I hope members of the government aren't suggesting that we would not want to hear from these representative indigenous organizations. Although they're not the direct users of the program, I think elected indigenous leaders have an important perspective to offer about what the impacts of this program are and should be, and some of the broader issues around how indigenous identity is defined and measured. I think we certainly would not want to exclude their voices from the conversation.
I think the amendment proposed by Mrs. Vignola is reasonable, and we'll be supporting it.