Thank you, Grand Chief.
Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
In respect to Bill C-44 the Manitoba Keewatinook Ininew Okimowin must advise the committee that after analysis and review we believe Bill C-44 does not recognize the inherent sovereignty of the MKIO first nations as described by Grand Chief Garrioch.
Bill C-44 does not reflect the sacred and joint relationship established by treaties entered into between the MKIO first nation and Her Majesty's government.
Bill C-44 infringes, interferes with, and does not recognize the contemporary systems of government, decision-making, and community organization established in accord with the customary law, principles, values, and beliefs of the MKIO first nations and which systems we continue to exercise and develop on our own terms.
Bill C-44 does not recognize and leave room for the exercise in further development of first nation government authority, as reflected in the existing system of laws established by individual MKIO first nations, through government-to-government agreements involving first nations and through the continuing development of Keewatinook Ininew Okimowin.
Bill C-44 represents an unjustifiable infringement of rights recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act of 1982, in part through the Crown's failure to engage in a Crown consultation in accordance with the doctrine established by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Bill C-44 will impose Canada's vision of human rights and Canada's standards for reconciling human rights with government and corporate actions. It will arbitrarily narrow timeframes during which the elected leadership of first nations must prepare for consideration and resolution of complaints by the Canadian Human Rights Commission and tribunal. It will impose an uncertainty in first nation authority and community decision-making processes through the jurisdiction of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal over matters that would otherwise be addressed by elected first nation leadership and through community-based decision-making processes. Bill C-44 will impose a review of customary laws, beliefs, values, and principles of first nations by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal without a statutory requirement to take into account how the MKIO first nations perceive individual and collective human rights as well as concepts of transparency, access, and accountability.
Bill C-44 also fails to recognize that a source of many human rights issues of importance to first nations arise directly from federal government policies, including the significant and persistent underfunding of social services, housing, and infrastructure that are administered under the authority of first nation governments and are beyond the capacity of first nation governments to remedy.
An example of this that I'd like to share is the Supreme Court's consideration of the critical housing shortage in first nation communities when it examined the case in Corbiere. The Supreme Court realized that in order to address the housing shortage sufficiently for first nation electors to go home and live on-reserve and vote would require instructions to government that the Supreme Court wasn't prepared to provide.
In order to reconcile that conundrum, it developed an analogous ground of aboriginality residence to recognize that it was not possible to resolve the shortage of housing on a first nation community within the current policy framework, and it developed an analogous ground for the determination of discrimination under charter cases. That's one example of many where the Supreme Court itself has been unable to visualize a pathway to reconcile many of the issues that may give rise to complaints that might be brought to the attention of the commission, and then from the commission to the tribunal.
We also would note that when the expert panel on water was considering the issue of the adequacy of resourcing for first nation water and waste water systems and was in fact instructed by the minister not to consider the matter of funding in their terms of reference, the expert panel persisted in its report to discuss that the Government of Canada must place a priority on adequately resourcing water and waste water systems on-reserve in order for adequate services to be provided.
Those are two examples we wanted to bring to the committee's attention in respect to this particular issue.
Grand Chief.