Thanks very much.
Thank you for coming, commissioners.
I'm new here. As you said in your remarks, Commissioner, I've known the social agenda a little bit more than the economic treaty agenda, so bear with me.
Since I arrived at this committee, we've been presented with the James Bay Cree Inuit approach, which seems to be pretty straightforward and has a pretty decent agreement on the shared land. It seems that will be something that will go ahead very quickly and will be expedited, I hope.
But as you can imagine, we have also been visited by the Stó:lo people. I certainly understand that settling treaties is about certainty, about going forward, but it seems the actual reserve-making was arbitrary to begin with in terms of when the crown drew those little tent pegs. We're feeling that strongly with Lake St. Martin right now. They need a new community on higher ground immediately and they don't really care where those original tent pegs were.
Could you explain to me why you as a commission have agreed to the Yale treaty without any carve-out for the overlapping contentious area? It could have been creative. This is the part that would be contentious. What I understand is that this actually may lead to violence, whether it's to highways, railways, hydro lines...this is a very, very contentious area, and with the traditional fishing and hunting in the Fraser, is there a reason why this went forward without the ability to settle this area of overlapping traditional shared territory of fishing and hunting? I think we're all just a bit unclear as to what we have to do, and as you said, Commissioner, if the chiefs will shake hands, then it's done. But if they won't, how can you go forward when both sides aren't in agreement?