Even if you're not, I think I'm going to do it anyway.
Thank you very much.
Thank you to our witness Ms. Gabriel for being here.
We appreciate your testimony so far. Obviously, this is a very important conversation. I want to thank you for making some time to be a part of it here today.
A question arose locally for me.... I come from Kenora, Ontario, in the district of Kenora. There are 42 first nations within that electoral district across Treaty No. 3, Treaty No. 5 and Treaty No. 9. One of the big concerns I continually hear is how difficult it is for the nations to develop and build on their land. They are struggling to grow. They are limited, as you mentioned—I don't remember the exact terminology you used—to that small square of land.
In northern Ontario, we have no shortage of land. It's all around us, but it's quite difficult for the first nations I have the honour of representing to access that in order to expand and grow. As a result, of course, many people have to leave their communities. Sometimes, they end up in large urban centres and a completely different world that unfortunately leads to a number of other challenges—but that is an aside.
The point of the question I want to get to is this: Obviously, we're having a very broad discussion on land back, in terms of the growth of first nations and those additions to reserves. I also know that it's an incredibly long, drawn-out process. Do you have any thoughts around that, specifically? How can the government help make that a much easier process, so that first nations can have access to the land—a lot of it was traditionally theirs in the first place—in order to grow and expand?