Thank you for the question and for recognizing the 150th anniversary of the signing of Treaty 4.
The short answer is that it absolutely would.
Our experience right now is with a dam restructuring project. It is time to build a new dam. When we talk about jurisdiction, we're also talking about legal protections to assist first nations, which, hopefully, are in this bill. This will give us more leverage and the ability in our tool box to—I don't want to say fight or to have to fight—assert that jurisdiction that we never gave up. We have the inherent right, as well as the treaty rights, to all of our traditional waters, as well as our waterways and shorelines.
Currently, we are in a deadlocked position with the Province of Saskatchewan. If we do not agree to sell our traditional lands to the province, so that it can rebuild our dam structure, in fact, it will not build the dam. That is essential. We are now in a position where we are contemplating court action, which is very expensive.
The Cowessess Nation is strong and proud. However, the monies that we have from own-source revenue should be going to the people. We should not be fighting what is already inherently ours. Our hope, with Bill C-61, is that this will give us another tool, so that we wouldn't have to go into that type of a legal fight.