That's a very big question. Essentially, I firmly believe that for those indigenous peoples who suffered at the residential school and are covered by the apology, the mandate and the calls for action, something more should be done. If that's the vehicle they choose to participate with, fine. In either this stage or in a strengthened one, that's up to them.
Again, we wouldn't want to say that we want to be on there, because then we kind of would be saying that we support what happened in the past, that everything is fine and dandy, that we don't need to deal with our issues and that our issues are no longer outstanding because they're being dealt with. I don't believe we really want to get engaged. As I was saying earlier, I think we want to continue working on a government-to-government basis, dealing directly with the federal government and not through some non-profit organization.
One of the things I vehemently oppose is Parliament passing legislation that's going to be entrenching falseness in legislation in terms of who represents whom. As I say, the federal government isn't keeping up with its reconciliation initiatives. One of its big initiatives was reconstituting indigenous nations, and we at the Manitoba Métis Federation, which was declared last weekend the national government of the Red River Métis—the Red River Métis meaning citizens of the historic Métis nation wherever they live, in Canada or outside of Canada—are the legitimate government of the Métis nation.
The Métis National Council is a membership organization made up four governing members. The courts in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario, just over the last two to three years, have said that they're not governments and are nothing more than voluntary membership organizations. The Métis can belong to them if they wish or don't wish. There is an initiative under these 35 reconciliation tables that Minister Bennett brought in and that she refused for the national body. There we could have kept some national principles that would have guided these, instead of creating these silos of self-government bodies by province, carving up our nation. It's like municipalities in Quebec becoming recognized governments and carving up the Québécois nation, so we're totally opposed to that. As for the MNC staying in there representing the Métis nation, I would call it an illegitimate act.