Thank you, Chair.
Thank you so much, Chief, for coming today.
I represent communities of Treaty 9, a little bit of lands from Robinson-Huron, and then my Algonquin communities that have never signed any treaties and they're very active in my region. I'm very proud to work with them.
There are a number of issues I want to get to. I don't want to sound curt, but I want to focus in on them because this is a rare opportunity for discussion.
I want to start off with this. AFN was a signatory to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. Part of that was the creation of the independent assessment process, which is supposed to be non-adversarial and a way of bringing closure.
We've seen the St. Anne survivors. Evidence was suppressed. The hearings were jigged. There were narratives that had lies. They've been in provincial court twice, and I believe they're going back a third time. Now we have the administrative split. We have the issue of the day scholars. All of this is getting wrapped up really quickly.
My question for you, as one of the signatories, is whether you believe that this IAP cannot be shut down until we get a clear answer on the justice to these cases that has been denied in such an egregious fashion. What are the AFN's views on how we deal with this, with the timelines on the closing of the IAP process?