I think that taking partisan shots is not helpful for the overall goal of this legislation and ensuring that all parties in this government support it. We're probably going to need unanimous consent to get this to the Senate. If all parties aren't in agreement with this legislation, then it's going to impact first nations communities.
I live in a first nations community. My overall goal is to ensure that we find legislation that all parties can agree with. To say that we're not in support of aboriginal and treaty rights, when they're in the purpose, to say we're not in agreement with UNDRIP, when it's in the purpose, or to say that we don't agree with the human right when it's already been voted on by this committee in a historic fashion is just inaccurate.
In terms of this specific clause, we do support the cultural and spiritual needs as applied in G-4, but when we start talking about economic needs, what if, instead of first nations just having clean drinking water, they want to do fracking with that water? What if they want to open up a bottling agency for bottled water? Are we going to put their cultural and spiritual needs on the back shelf for the economic needs?
What we're trying to protect is the cultural and spiritual part. It's what we talked to AFN about. It's what they recommended, and that's what we're going to go with.