Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Internet quality is fairly tricky in the north at the best of times, and I don't think the forest fires are helping. We will endeavour to provide further written submissions, not just on this particular matter but generally on some of our suggestions, to help address some of the issues around getting land back.
I was talking about free, prior and informed consent. The only other point I want to make, if I can be heard, is that there may be creative solutions to deal with a situation in which a mining company has a huge development and it's too late to claw the land back. There may not be enough benefits through something like an impact and benefit agreement, but the negotiating party would not be well disposed to saying, “We're going to settle this agreement and we'll just let that one slide by.” There may be some off-ramps the government can consider to deal with the issues around resource royalties, for example, or employment provisions separately from the treaty negotiations or treaty implementation.
If there's a way to deal with some of these outside of the treaty process, then the treaty process itself should not be used as a means to extinguish any of those rights that still exist on behalf of indigenous governments with respect to lands and resources. All we're suggesting is that there may be creative ways to allow these issues to be resolved, not necessarily through the treaty process but through something different, and those will achieve the economic reconciliation.
Thanks.