I'm Tony Wawatie, the interim director general of Barriere Lake.
During all this time, the community has been positioning itself to bring back the governance system we've had since time immemorial, which was taken away by Canada with the imposition of section 74 of the Indian Act. This is completely foreign to our members.
As you know, we are in a crisis situation. Overcrowding and social conditions have built up. There are no socio-economic opportunities for our members. We would have had all this in place had Canada not walked away from the memorandum of mutual intent it signed in October 1997.
We ask the support of this standing committee to push forth what we want. We have a vision for our community, and this is what we want. We want our governance system back in place. There's a strategy with which we plan to build our capacities. We have had 11 years of third party management with no capacities and no exit strategy. It is wrong for Canada to put us in that situation, and I urge the Canadian people to do something about it.
Meegwetch.