Meegwetch for the question and for letting me share part of the day with all of you today.
If we look at all of those examples where our lands have been in limbo for quite some time, including the area you mentioned—I have friends in the Grand Council Treaty No. 3 area as well—how do you measure the cost of lands being tied up in limbo for so long?
We're fortunate where I come from to have such a good rapport with the neighbouring municipalities and to be able to develop economic development projects. As a land management community, we have close to 100 businesses now—first nation, non-first nation and partnerships—that are going ahead, investing and creating a strong economy and a strong social fabric, and on good faith, because those lands really are still in question.
I hope I'm answering your question here, but we're going to need to see a process that is completely revamped. If you talk to the land managers, the frontline workers, the lands people in our communities, they're going to tell you and tell all of us that there's so much red tape. I think that's where your question is coming from. The left hand doesn't seem to know what the right hand is doing.
In fact, there are people from our community who have started working on our file, who have come on board and have moved papers from one side of the desk to the other, and still today, as I mentioned in my comments, the final desired end result is not there. We don't have those lands back under clear title, which is awkward for investors and for developers. We're not able to move at the speed of business, but we've done quite well so far. If we had to narrow it down—one of the spokespeople said the same thing earlier—there's so much red tape that it's horrendous for our workers who are charged with the responsibility of bringing in accurate information.
Meegwetch.