Thank you, MP Battiste.
My understanding as a treaty commissioner, and from the research that we have in our office, publications and oral history—the other side of the treaties—is that treaties were not cede and surrender. The land was never meant to be surrendered. The cede and surrender clause was inserted into Treaty No. 3 after.
If you look at any records from the treaty negotiations, which includes diaries, journal inserts and translations that were meticulously kept by translators such as clergy, the North-West Mounted Police, etc., there is the absence of the translation of cede and surrender. What you will find is cede and surrender inserted into text on the parchment that makes up the text of the treaties that Canada relies very heavily on for justification of taking up land and resource development.