[Witness spoke in Inuktitut, interpreted as follows:]
First of all, when you are meeting in this meeting, I am so happy and really proud to hear my language being spoken here because you have to hear our language too.
[English]
I'll try to answer that question by talking about two things.
One is the matter of the extinguishment and surrender of indigenous rights, which was a condition of our signing the James Bay agreement in 1975. The Cree of James Bay and the Inuit of northern Quebec were absolutely helpless about that precondition. We had nowhere to go. We could not go to the Supreme Court to prevent this terrible extinguishment and surrender. This totally destroyed the harmony amongst the Inuit of northern Quebec. The Government of Canada and the Government of Quebec used that as a sledgehammer, as a precondition for any benefits for the Cree and Inuit to be put in a formal agreement.
About 15 years after that, the Government of Canada hired a judge named Hamilton to study it and look for alternatives to extinguishment and surrender. The search was not serious enough to find a solution. Something like a national council for reconciliation could have done nothing but be helpful to finding a solution suitable not just for the indigenous parties but for governments in Canada. It is a difficult, terrible condition that we've had to live with since.
That's one example of something that can be examined in a serious search for a solution.
The second example is that I took part in the first ministers conferences of the 1980s, where the main goal of indigenous parties in that process was begging Canada's provinces, territories and the Government of Canada for the recognition of an inherent right to self-determination. We couldn't breach the fortresses of colonialism on that question. The last first ministers conference in 1987 ended with abject failure to find anything of the sort, although the governments were willing to recognize a contingent right, which means that by their good mercies and with their being the source of it, a right may be recognized.
We were pursuing a right that pre-existed the formation of Canada. That ended in failure. Then, 31 years later, on Valentine's Day—February 14, 2018—I woke up to watch on television the Prime Minister of Canada stand up in Parliament and recognize the indigenous peoples' inherent right to self-government.
I don't know what happened between the failure of 1987 and the Prime Minister's statement affirming such a right in 2018. I think less time would have elapsed if something like a national council of reconciliation addressed important issues like that to find solutions for them, instead of waiting for the Prime Minister to get up on the right side of his bed that morning and recognize the right.
That's my point.