Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all of our witnesses today. Your testimony has been absolutely tremendous. I really appreciate your taking the time and investing in this important piece of legislation.
For my first question, I'm going to start with Ms. Restoule, but I want the other witnesses to please listen to my question, because I want to follow up with each of you on the same question, so just be aware.
Ms. Restoule, in June of 2021, you wrote an article entitled “Empowering Indigenous entrepreneurs offers [a] new way forward”. In that article, you talked about a few things. You talked about the size and expected growth of the indigenous economy. You talked about indigenous entrepreneurship and how your own family's personal history of resilience and perseverance allowed you to push through and work around the Indian Act to prioritize your own economy.
I want to be clear: This was framed in the context of the very fresh and recent discovery at the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. There are a couple of quotes you offered in that article that I want to set this up with:
And while Indigenous peoples continue the work to heal, we continue to trust that the path forward is one that moves us towards prosperity through full economic participation and self-determination.
In the discussion or concept of economic reconciliation, if it is integral to success as we move forward to true self-determination and away from the Indian Act...a couple of you have already referred to this, but I want you to speak again about the importance of having representation on the national council from organizations or individuals that would focus on the interest of economic reconciliation.
If each of you could take about a minute and a half to speak to that, that's going to pretty much kill my six minutes.