I want to thank Mr. Chartrand for being here today. I really appreciate it. He always says he speaks straight from the heart, and he usually does and I much appreciate that.
Mr. Chartrand, probably the main issue is, in the purpose of the act there are just two parts—that's in clause 4 of the act. The second part of it is to provide a framework for the Canadian government to implement the declaration. I don't have a problem with that part. Where Conservatives have a problem is where it says, in paragraph (a), that the declaration will be a universal “human rights instrument with application in Canadian law”. I don't doubt that it has application in Canadian law, but we can't just insert the declaration as Canadian law. We can't just declare it to be Canadian law, because it's much more of a framework. It's an aspirational document.
I use UN documents and UN protocols often to identify.... I've been recently quoted in the media as saying that duty to consult is sufficient. I think it's a system that's working. It's a system that continues to work its way out. I would recognize that I used the Palermo protocol, which is a UN document, for identifying victims of human trafficking. I want to bring Canada in alignment with the Palermo protocol. I used the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as a framework to give me an idea of how we bring Canada into alignment. I also would use the UNDRIP. Okay, this is a framework. How do we bring Canada in alignment with it? It just doesn't translate into Canadian law directly.
This is to you, Mr. Chartrand. This is where I go with every witness. The duty to consult, as it's been worked out over generations, and free, prior and informed consent, are we on the same wavelength with these two terms, or are we going to be introducing a whole new concept into the way we do relationships between first nations, Métis people and the Government of Canada?