Thank you for coming here today. I'm going to do a bit of a preamble and then leave time for you to share your thoughts.
It is of course no secret that we do have a few concerns in terms of what this bill means. I do want to note that we have asked the justice department for a definition of consent. I don't believe we've received it. If we could ask the justice department again for that definition, I would appreciate it.
I'm not sure that we aren't going to end up in more court cases rather than less. I really do believe that.
For example, I think a natural resources project that's a mining project is pretty straightforward. Any company that wants to do a mine knows full well that they have to have full engagement from the very beginning with the community where they want to create this mine, whether it's for Ajax or Prosperity. I think the message is pretty clear.
As an example, I watched Kinder Morgan spend years and years.... Of course, the fact that they have 51 agreements speaks to the work done by both the federal government and those 51 communities. Mr. Saganash indicated that free, prior, and informed consent had to include everyone, so what we would have, as I see it, is a gridlock, a deadlock, that we don't have with the current framework.
For my other example, I will use the Liberals' marijuana legislation, where I would suggest that they didn't hold true to any kind of even an attempt to have good conversation and get consent around that. The law is of general application. Who do you get consent from? How do you move forward? Right now, the federal government is arguing in court that moving towards free, prior, and informed consent would fetter the ability of the federal government to make laws around general application.
In a nutshell, I think those are some of the areas that certainly we are very concerned about. To date, the testimony has not alleviated my concerns.