Yes. The concept of the bill and overseeing this reconciliation discussion is a great one, in theory, for sure. It is definitely needed.
I'm just honestly trying to wrap my head around what we've heard from the other speakers and what I brought up as well, which is that all of the communities are just so different in where they're at.
In our community of Williams Lake, for example, we did $20 million in development over the past two years in this region. If you compare that to one of our neighbouring communities in the same region, we're way further advanced. It's mainly based on location. We've really struggled in holding up our culture and how much we've been able to retain, because more was lost than, let's say, in a rural community three or four hours from the city of Williams Lake.
Our priorities are just a little bit different. We've been able to progress and we're further along. We're the tip of the spear for communities to follow and see the example that we've set, but again, there's just no “one size fits all” in this discussion. We need to realize that as we're developing this committee and passing this bill. We have to acknowledge that all these communities are different.
There's a further, in-depth sub-education that needs to happen throughout the process, so that we're understanding how we can help these individual communities and these separate nations for the overall picture of what a healthy Canada looks like.