As stated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements—modern treaties, historical treaties, numbered treaties, the Douglas treaties out here, comprehensive reconciliation agreements and any number of agreements out here—are very important, because what you're committing to is an arrangement. It's an agreement that must be upheld by all parties.
In these modern treaties, far too often, and we've seen in the history of Canada how many treaties were broken.... Quite simply, modern treaties—there are a number of them here in British Columbia—need to be upheld. Those commitments made by provincial and federal governments need to be upheld and held to higher standards.
Those first nations that have modern treaties, like the Nisga'a Treaty, came into these agreements on the understanding that we were all going to work together. Even the municipal governments were going to come together and work with the first nations on how they were going to administer some of their lands and decisions that were being made.
Especially in terms of economic development, where there are many initiatives, like the Tsawwassen, you have a huge economic development initiative out there. The Nisga'a have their plans about the development of the fisheries. They also, I believe, have arrangements with LNG.
Those partnerships are quite important, because what they came into these agreements for is what I alluded to previously. They don't want to be held by program funding. They want self-determination and sovereignty in how they conduct their own affairs [Technical difficulty—Editor] their traditional territories.
