It's probably cold comfort for you to hear that we can reproduce that same negotiation strategy, and only travel half an hour. I understand that you're trying to exemplify the immense costs and resources that you deploy in actually getting people from A to B in the Far North, and the impacts. It would appear to be disrespectful to just sit there for a half hour, a half day, and it's an in-and-out strategy.
I don't like making this a partisan thing. It doesn't make me blind to the cuts that occurred in the past, but when we talk about reconciliation, there's still a segment of our society that wants it, but thinks it has to be done for free. When people look at the amounts we're investing into things—whether we're talking about just over $1 billion in loans that had to be forgiven or were removed from the books for indigenous communities that had to fight in court for their legitimate claims—we've been able to move that stuff to clear the playing field, so we're starting on an equal basis.
I know it's frustrating to hear that these things are slow, and nothing's going to happen. I still have hope. I would have to fire myself if I said I didn't have hope. The reality is that we spend a lot of time co-developing fiscal policies that will make a huge difference in levelling the playing field, allowing communities to lift themselves up in the spirit of self-determination. There are many tools that are allowing us to work with communities, supporting them in their self-governance efforts as they work toward a nation to nation basis, which has to be an equal to equal basis.
We know the conditions on which we imposed indigenous communities to sign treaties, for example, to sign agreements in the past. That's why we call the ones that we feel are more progressive “modern treaties”, because they're more egalitarian and fair in nature. There's work to do with them as well.
The pace of things is well registered within this government. We've been around for six years, with 19 self-government agreements, and there are more to come.
Land is a proposition. You would say that in the Far North, where there's so much of it, it should be a no-brainer. It still gets complicated, but—