There will be a lot more people who have better ideas on how to speed it up, but I do have a couple of thoughts on this.
First of all, how do you even get in the door on additions to reserves? It's very difficult for indigenous people across the country to make the argument to have an application for additions to reserve accepted. There is a barrier there.
Second, when we're talking about land back and land restitution, additions to reserve aren't that. That's not what land back is about, because reserves end up being reserve lands under the Indian Act. They're actually held by the King now. For most indigenous people, at least my clients, they don't see that as land back. It can be an important step, but it's not land back.
Just going to a point on a question asked before this about who gets to decide, there was a question from your colleague about the Wet'suwet'en, suggesting that this is democracy at play. No, it's not. It's not democracy at play, because who gets the right? It's the people on the Indian Act band list, not the sum total of the members of the nation.
When you're looking at band list members voting for something, you're looking at a small portion of the members of the nation. That's not democracy at play. It's important to understand that there's a wider collective, a wider nation, and they aren't the ones who are going to be taking advantage or be able to capitalize on reserve lands because those were Indian Act bands.
Thank you.