To recap from the first round, this bill will commit us to changing the laws to be consistent with free, prior, and informed consent. We don't have a clear definition of what consent is and we don't understand how we're going to get consent from Métis, Inuit, and the first nations from across this country, so we're moving ahead with something that has some important unanswered questions.
I want to go again to Justice and into another area. In the Supreme Court of Canada, Department of Justice lawyers, on January 15—and this was after there had been a commitment to implement the UN declaration—stated that the idea that Canada needs to expand the duty to consult to be in line with our international obligations, including UNDRIP, then “fails to reflect that Canada's consultation process is consistent with international standards.” They argued that the duty to consult is firmly established in existing Canadian jurisprudence and that UNDRIP does not change that.
Is that the position of the department?
You had the minister and the Prime Minister commit to implementing the UN declaration. You have your Justice lawyers in court arguing those statements. To me, they seem completely unaligned. It seems to go to Mr. Anandasangaree's comment that although this is a tool, there's nothing that precludes the government, if they were serious about what they were doing, to be arguing a completely different track.
If they were serious about the UN declaration, why are those comments being made in court?