Thank you, Mr. Chair;
I'd like to thank everybody for their presentations. They were excellent. And I would like to especially thank Mr. Lawrence Paul for sharing with us his long history in terms of these issues.
I would like to ask this, following on what Mr. Paul just said. We are talking about human rights here and ensuring human rights.
Mr. Anderson, you talked about a couple of big items that are issues across the country for first nations--housing, water, and the list goes on and on. It seems to me that if we're talking about ensuring human rights, we're starting in the wrong place. This doesn't seem to be the right way to go about it, because we don't have a level playing field to begin with. There's a lack of services. There's a lack of adequate programs. Children are suffering.
So could we speak to that, about where it is we should be starting in terms of ensuring human rights for first nations? Is this the right place to be starting a bill like Bill C-44? Or is there somewhere else we should be starting in terms of ensuring human rights for first nations in Canada?