Thank you. My name is Lorne Cochrane. I'm from the Fisher River Cree Nation.
I've been involved in first nations' businesses and lives for all my life obviously, but I first got involved in politics in 1989. I was the chief of my community. I left there and joined the federal government as the associate RDG and the RDG. I had numerous issues with respect to the policy on default from day one.
It's still before us. I mean, everything is punitive in the government's eyes when they take action. They don't promote progress. They don't promote good governance. Maybe if we spent more time in those areas, we would be bringing people along rather than pulling them back to an area where we have to have discussions on default.
I'm currently sitting on the fiscal advisory committee with the AFN in Minister Bennett's office. It's troubling to be having discussions that we had over 30 years ago. My community alone was one of the first to sign the flexible transfer agreement. It has been changed so many times, unilaterally, by the federal government that it's hurting our development and our growth. I think it's under the guise that we're progressing too far and leaving others behind, and I say that with no disrespect. Success is always linked to opportunity, and if you don't take hold of it at the time and have the tools, you're going to lose it and still have these discussions with respect to default management.
Even our default management policy, which we have to go by, takes up so much time and drives away prospective partners, not only in business but with financial institutions and others. A lot of the banks are backing away from dealing with first nations. That's unless you have trusts and everything else, when of course they want your business.
I'm hopeful in going forward that there are some initiatives that are more progressive in terms of dealing with communities and then bringing others along, rather than bringing everybody back to a level playing field or progressing too far.
So many unilateral changes impact our communities, that whether you're in a flexible agreement or a contribution agreement is very prescriptive. I don't know if there's a willingness or a desire to make significant changes in that direction, but if we don't, we're still going to be having this discussion 20 years from now. Our children can't afford to wait that long.
We hear a lot about the challenges across Canada. I've been involved in this business for the last 30 years, and it's getting frightening. You're hearing so much frustration from the grassroots, who have nothing. What do they have to lose? You hear talk like that. I've visited about every reserve in Manitoba. I've attended community meetings over the last 30 years in every one of those communities, and it's sad that we have that situation.
Hopefully we can open a good dialogue this morning. I want to give you thanks for giving us the opportunity to be here. Thank you.