Then I'll just say it really simply that the $150-million cap is too low, in light of developments in the case law. It means that a lot of straightforward claims involving credible acreage, surrender claims, and treaty land entitlement claims now fall outside of the benefits of the tribunal process, and $150 million isn't enough. By restricting claimants under the policy and before the tribunal to $150 million, you are in effect obstructing access to justice for countless first nations whose claims are now forced to enter the judicial process, which is filled with all sorts of challenges.
This brings me to point number two, technical defences. Until 1951, first nations weren't able to retain legal counsel. Many other restrictions have been placed on their ability to realize justice arising from historical specific claims. Today, in every single piece of litigation before the superior courts, you will find the crown defending on the basis of limitation periods, for example, which of course, in effect, extinguish aboriginal and treaty rights by virtue of their operation in statute barred claims.
My simple recommendation in this regard is to amend the legislation—either to recognize, the way you have in the tribunal process, that those limitation defences have no effect, or perhaps to create a grace period effective the date of that legislation, allowing for 10 to 15 years for all outstanding historical specific claims to be filed into the process, which would be immune to those types of defences. If you don't do that, the result would be decades-long litigation of going in and out of abeyance and negotiation, and in and out of various interlocutory or dispositive motions, which cost a lot of money.
The final comment I have is that, from our perspective, the tribunal is working. We believe that the tribunal is substantially achieving the objectives that it sought to effect. I will start briefly by looking at the case of Beardy's and Okemasis. That was the test case for the treaty annuities claims. It was submitted to the ministry in 2001, and it was rejected in 2008. Ordinarily, the only recourse would have been to the courts, where technical obstacles abound and often Eurocentric trial judges preside.
The tribunal went into operation in 2011, and this was the second claim filed with it. In 2016, we obtained a decision on damages. Since that time, we have seen a sort of centrifugal force, if you will. More and more claims are now being accepted for negotiation, as the risk assessment becomes more realistic at the Department of Justice, which we feel stems from the realization and resolution of these claims before a neutral, independent third party adjudicator.