Yes. I think there are a number of features of the land claims agreement, but I will just give you one example with which we've encountered some difficulties. That is article 24, which relates to government contracting.
Article 24 requires both the territorial government, that is, the Government of Nunavut, and the federal government to develop contracting procedures that would provide an opportunity for Inuit-owned companies to secure government contracts. Now, this has been done by the Government of Nunavut. The way it is set up, Nunavut Tunngavik has a registry of Inuit firms. Inuit firms are defined as those that are over 51% Inuit-owned or are Inuit-owned co-ops. So we have the registry. The way the Government of Nunavut does this is by giving a bid advantage to Inuit firms when awarding contracts, so if there's an Inuit firm it will for sure get a 7% bid advantage. In some circumstances, that could be as high as 21%.
The federal government, regrettably, has never done anything comparable to that. The one exception is perhaps a little surprising.
The one exception is the Department of National Defence, which negotiated an agreement with us relating to the cleanup of DEW Line sites. This indeed provides that when contracts are awarded for the cleanup of a DEW Line site, which is an old radar site with a lot of contaminants usually left behind, there will be a minimum Inuit employment level set for the work on that site, usually at somewhere around 70%, and a minimum dollar value for Inuit contracting, which is usually also at somewhere around 70%.
In the vast majority of cases, those objectives have been reached. One of the regional Inuit leaders told me that he thought negotiating that agreement was one of the best accomplishments of NTI.
In other words, this is an agreement that's consistent with the land claims agreement and provides jobs and opportunities to members of communities. It also has spinoffs and allows the development of Inuit businesses. That's one example I would give of how the land claim agreement is important as a tool in dealing with the issues of economic disparity and poverty in Nunavut.
For various reasons, the federal government seems to have been unwilling to take this approach across the board. Though we've tried since 1993 to get something in place that would be comparable or similar for other government departments, we have not been successful in doing so.