Thank you very much for the invitation and for your time today.
My name is Marion Lefebvre. I'm the vice-president for aboriginal governance at the Institute on Governance. I'm going to take a moment to tell you a bit about our organization, and then I will turn this over to my colleague, Laura, who will speak to the paper in which you expressed interest.
The Institute on Governance has existed in Ottawa for over 20 years. As our name suggests, our focus is on governance. We work on the international, domestic, public, and aboriginal arena, and we do some work on corporate governance as well.
We offer three main service lines: policy-based research, advisory services, and training. We hope to be a leading expert in this field across all our subject matter specialties. We believe that improving governance in aboriginal communities is a very large key to unlocking the economic development potential of those communities, and to us that's an important connection to continue to make, given this committee's interest and subject matter specialty.
With that as a general background, we are a not-for-profit. We do projects very regularly. Over our 20-year span of existence we have done approximately 360 projects, which have focused on various elements of aboriginal governance as it relates to both commercial and social service delivery. We hope that through the background we've been able to accumulate through those collective experiences we'll have something to offer you today.
You expressed a specific interest in a paper that my colleague, Laura Edgar, wrote three years ago, and I will turn it over to Laura to take you through her findings in this important area of land management.
Thank you.