Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, Professor Schwartz.
That was, indeed, a very clear and succinct presentation. I could have listened to more of it; that's for sure. It was certainly not all technical. It was shrouded in lots of common sense. You can have a bill that is hollow if it's not resourced properly, if other processes that feed into this particular process, once it's established, are not put in place.
I have three questions.
Would this bill be improved if there were a joint appointment process? You may have more to say about this, but I don't see anything, technically speaking, that would stop us from making that amendment to this particular bill. Maybe the political will wasn't there or people's positions were firm and fast, particularly the government's probably, and they couldn't arrive at that particular place. So we could make that. I'm not sure if that would be a do-or-die type of position for the government. I'm not sure where they are with it, but we could make that amendment. Would you see that as an improvement, and would that not invest this particular bill with establishing more trust in terms of how this could work for first nations people?
Secondly, the decision to only appoint people who are Superior Court judges limits the pool from which we can draw in terms of the tribunal members. There are constitutional experts in aboriginal law. There are professors--and maybe you are one--in aboriginal law. There are legal scholars. There are aboriginal lawyers who are quite well known and have contributed decades of time and effort who should be in that pool, but they are not Superior Court judges. In terms of enhancing the pool we could draw from, would it be a positive development in terms of Bill C-30, if something like that could be accommodated? I'd like to get a sense of where you are with that.
The other thing is about the awards. You say that prior to something being referred to the tribunal, you can engage in negotiations. You can be very creative about what types of settlements you can have. There could be land at that particular time or there may not be land. There are various forms they can take. But you also made the comment that the fact that it goes to a tribunal and you can only award cash may influence the creativity in that negotiation phase. Would the converse of that also be true, that once you hit the tribunal phase, there would be an award, and then a release that the first nation had to sign? Where would that allow for creativity afterwards, or would the pressure not come off, if you wanted to have some type of negotiation after?
I thank you.