There are elements that are universal. I think the primacy of first nations and aboriginal voices in what we do is definitely the most important, but the contexts and the needs are different. Part of what we do is trying to balance the fact that those 203 communities are very diverse in size, in needs, in geography.
There is always competition for scarce resources—anybody working in government knows that really well—there's never enough money. Part of our role is to find new ways to do things with the resources we have.
There is universality. There are things we continue to share. My boss is Evan Adams. Some of you may know who he is, another first nations physician from B.C. He spends a lot of time travelling across the country talking to other first nations organizations, as does our CEO, Joe Gallagher, to say this is what we did, this is how we do it, this is how we're continuing in this work, and offering them our lessons learned for them to apply or not apply according to their context.
B.C. is unique in that, except for Treaty No. 8 territory way up in the northeast and a couple of the old historic treaties, like the Douglas Treaty on the island, most of B.C. is not in treaty.
Treaty changes the context. There is a lot more structure to the conversations between the crown and the nations. We're here. This is unceded territory and, how do I say this gently, the Supreme Court seems to agree that the government has gotten a few things wrong.
I think in a resource-based economy where that dichotomy existed it allowed for a really different conversation between province and first nations about how we are going to move forward together.