Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to welcome you to the 24th meeting of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.
Today we will be continuing with our hearings regarding Bill C-30, An Act to establish the Specific Claims Tribunal and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.
We have a very full house here today, so welcome to all of you, both our large number of witnesses as well as those in the room today. I only point that out because there are actually people at home watching this on television and they can't see that part of the room to know that we have a full house here today.
We have the Iroquois caucus here today, and we will begin with six presentations from this group, limited to 10 minutes each. We have two hours, so we need to be done at 5:30. I'm going to restrict those presentations to 10 minutes, and I would ask for your cooperation in that regard. I'll give you a one-minute warning. When you start your presentation, at one point I will just say, “one minute left”, and that gives you an idea of your time so you can wrap it up. I only ask that because following those six presentations, which will take a little over an hour, we will have a round of questioning, and I know that many of the committee members would like to have the opportunity to ask questions. Depending on how long it takes us to get to that point, we'll adjust to determine whether we have time for one round of questioning or whether we have time for possibly two rounds. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
First, we are going to get a presentation from Chief Bill Montour on behalf of the entire group. There are 10 minutes for that presentation. Following that, we'll have a second presentation from the Six Nations of the Grand River, which will also be given by Chief Montour.
I will give you 10 minutes, and if you finish your first presentation before that, then I'll just make that point and we'll carry on to the second one as well. With that, welcome, Chief Montour. You have 10 minutes.