I truly believe that this piece of legislation is the most important piece of work that we will do as first nations people in this country, but it is not just first nations people. I think this needs to be a collective front by both non-indigenous and indigenous peoples, in order to be able to see any success in terms of reunification and maintaining strong ties between our children and youth and their communities.
In our situation in British Columbia—and that is all I can speak to—I believe it's really important that we have a relationship with the province that kind of puts us in a unique situation. We are currently sitting at a table with a tripartite process between Canada, British Columbia and the First Nations Leadership Council. Through this process, we've been able to identify priorities, identify what's going to work in terms of moving forward and make some substantive change in our communities.
I believe that, through that relationship, we are at a bit of an advantage in terms of being able to work towards implementing the legislation once it receives royal assent.
I believe that the fact that the legislation recognizes our inherent right in our jurisdiction over child welfare issues gives us the ability to put into place protective measures, so that we're not coming from a protection focus; rather, we will be able to do it with a prevention focus.
My agency in my nation started based on that foundation of providing preventative services, so that we could address an issue as soon as it was identified and we could provide family supports and provide them with the tools necessary to keep families together, as opposed to coming to a point where children had to be removed.
This legislation will provide us with those tools to do it on a broader scale. I believe that, through that, we will keep our kids safe.