Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the presenters here today. I really appreciate your presentation of very interesting information.
As a Métis person from the Northwest Territories, I totally understand the work and effort that has taken place over the years. I think my committee colleagues are tired of hearing me say it, but I've been involved in a land claim since the 1970s, and we still haven't finished our framework agreement. It's a long process, but I think we're also all connected.
My first language was Michif. I'm a descendant of people who were fighting in the Riel Rebellion and who went north to avoid prosecution, so in some ways I think we're all connected. The fighting during the Riel Rebellion caused people to split all over the country.
I can tell you that in the Northwest Territories, in our case, we have a joint land claim. It's first nations and Métis together. We share a lot in common. We're all related, and we speak the same languages for the most part. We share hunting areas.
When it comes to negotiating a land claim, though, the status first nations can pull out a band council list that's well documented. Everything is there—birth dates and all the information that's been compiled for years. On our side, on the Métis side, we don't have a list like that. We have to take the list that we have compiled, and the government decides.... Together, I guess, we decide on criteria, and then there's an enumeration process. That process could take a long time in some cases. The NWT Métis, for example, have been negotiating and doing the enumeration since the 1990s, and they figure that at the rate they're going, it's going to be another 10 years. They certainly don't have the numbers that you guys have.
I'm expecting that this is what you're going to be seeing.
I don't know if everybody is on the same page when it comes down to your membership, though. I want you to just tell me quickly.... Maybe just one of you can confirm that there is a confirmation, that there is a test for every one of your members, and that there will be a process, at some point, for enumeration.