Thank you.
I agree with you when you talk about each nation. Whether or not each nation's sovereignty is respected by the federal government, it's a sovereign nation anyway. It's a nation that existed before and treaties were made with these nations. When the treaties were first made the language was not set up as, “We'll call it a treaty, but we're really the boss and you're not separate sovereign people.” That's not the language of the treaty, but it's a little different from the way we treat other countries, like France, Tahiti, the Congo and Rwanda. Whether it was right or not, over the past several hundred years the Canadian government has taken a paternalistic approach, which has led to certain results and certain dependencies. Not only that, when I talk to most first nations people, my understanding is that they also love being Canadian and being part of this country. They don't seek to be treated separately like Rwanda. They also want to be part of this nation.
When we talk to Rwanda, and let's say we want to support Rwanda and Rwanda says they don't want our help, at the end of the day, we say that's Rwanda's choice. They're a sovereign nation and if they sink into poverty, despair, ruin, and chaos, we'll say that it's sad, but it's not our fault and it's not our problem. If we were to do that in Canada, say, to a first nation that didn't have leadership in place, and we said that we'd leave it to that individual band or tribe or nation to make all their decisions, and things fell apart and there was poverty, would we not be culpable in letting them do that?