Thank you to the witnesses for coming today. I'm hoping to get some better understanding of this.
I'm happy to have some people who don't see this as a slam dunk because that's the only way I can learn. If we are just surrounded by yes-men, then we don't really learn that much.
I do have a couple of questions about some of the concerns that were brought up, and maybe you can help me figure them out.
One of the concerns is that under this change, even though it's not as much discretion as in the original Indian Act, the minister maintains more discretion than you would prefer. Sometimes when I talk to the minister, it sounds like it's more discretion than he would prefer too.
If there is a concern about a corrupt election or corrupt leadership and so on, for which the ministerial discretion is maintained so that there's something to appeal to, maybe I misheard, but it said the onus will fall on the leadership of these various first nations.
Wouldn't that be the leadership whose very legitimacy or corruption is being called into question by that leadership's people? If it falls to the leadership of a first nation to resolve a complaint of that first nation's people, how could we resolve that concern?