Thank you, Chair. Thanks for having me here as a guest at the committee.
It's a very interesting discussion. I'm reminded of a discussion I had with a NAN elder up in Sioux Lookout, where we were doing boil water advisory work together. He made the comment that “It's the paper mills and the mines, the poking holes in Mother Earth that causes the first problem.” This legislation intends to solve that by starting with the first principles of having clean water.
Having bars such that the indigenous people aren't able to negotiate clean water—such as putting the recommendation we're discussing right now on the table, saying that everybody has to be at the table, including the provinces—could not only impede the NAN from successfully gaining clean water, but could also cause the elder to lose people from his band to the employment in the paper mills and the mines, and so people aren't even able to work on clean water solutions.
I think that keeping the frustrations away from the first nations and making sure that we have a clear pathway for them to get to clean water is very important, so I won't be supporting this amendment for that reason.