Thank you.
I'm very saddened by the approach that you have chosen to take, when you talk about changing lives for aboriginal people in a positive way. I really feel that the way we could have done it was through mutual respect, partnerships, providing the resources and the power to change in the community, within the community, by the people. For me, that was Kelowna, and that was the start.
What I see with your approach, Mr. Minister, is a very adversarial way of achieving what you feel we need to achieve. Part of it is saying that the bands would not be responsive to the people unless there's legislation forcing them to, instead of saying it's the lack of resources in their communities and it's the capacity-building that we need to move towards. I'm very concerned that these measures are very divisive measures, instead of having collaboration and a group of people working together for a positive change.
None of us are saying that human rights should not be respected, but I'm also very troubled by your statement that individual rights trump collective rights. That's the basis of a misunderstanding of where you come from and where I come from.
Land, for example.... When we do land claims agreements, we keep that land in a collective right. That's the basis of most of our land claims. If you say that individual rights trump collective rights, then all of us in land claims agreements are in the danger of losing that parcel of land to someone else because an individual right won over a collective right. I think there needs to be a balance. That's why the interpretive clause is so important to us.
The timeframe is also really troubling—six months. Six months to enable a band to be in a position to deal with the fundamental change I don't think is fair.
There are more comments. I'm really troubled by the approach. We're not getting enough time, we're not getting enough resources, and there isn't a partnership approach and a mutual respect for the actual communities that are going to have to deal with this change.
Again, I'm just very worried about the position you have taken in the approach to this legislation.