Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Anecdotally, Chief Montour, you should take comfort in the fact that you're not a lawyer and that you do have common sense. Lawyering and common sense rarely go hand in hand. As my colleague just pointed out, that's spoken as a true lawyer. Mr. Lemay is upset that I'm dissing my own.
For a couple of weeks now we have listened to testimony across the bigger issue, which can be bifurcated into the content of Bill C-3 and then the exploratory process with respect to what in my view is a justification for the exploratory process itself; that is, there appear to be some fairly serious and profound issues around status membership and citizenship and the different perspectives on what status membership and citizenship implicate.
For the record, I share the view of the minister and his officials, who rightly said that apart from being inclusive, the department didn't have a preconceived notion of what a separate exploratory process would look like. In my respectful view, that may mitigate some of the sense that this is intended to be any process that resembles a colonial or agent-type process.
As a signatory to the Indian residential school agreement, even within the confines of the law and one of the largest class action settlements in the history of the free world, I think what we saw was consensus on a number of defined legal issues, policy matters, as they may be implicated, from the scope of what the court could have potentially considered had it actually gone before the bench.
That said, my focus in the back half of this seven minutes afforded to me is to try to understand some of the key points of convergence, and perhaps divergence, so far.
I respect and understand some of the concerns around national forums, but I think it should be pointed out that a number of the people at this session have, and currently do, participate in national forums with respect to first nations governance. In an attempt to understand, perhaps more comprehensively, what the divergent and the convergent points are, I would ask—and perhaps I'll just pick a couple of chiefs....
Chief Lonechild, you made some interesting points on a principled approach that is respectful of a nation-to-nation nation-building relationship based on a treaty. I appreciate that. You felt or perceived that there was a broad consensus.
Maybe you could start the discussion around some of the key divergent and convergent points. I think it's worth saying that the exploratory process is wide open to that extent, and it may very well involve a dialogue about some of the substantive points you raised.
Thank you.