I can add to that.
Thank you for the question, Lori.
We have been a self-governing people for hundreds of years. We have fought and fought. From Louis Riel losing his life to my own uncle dying on the last day of the Battle of Batoche, our people have gone through a lot.
When we talk about scattered communities.... In Saskatchewan, to get families off road allowance, they had this scheme whereby they could send them up north to a particular community of Green Lake. As those people got into the trains, their villages and their communities were burned. They watched that happen.
This is not something that we're fighting for all of a sudden. We've been fighting this for since the Battle of Seven Oaks in the early 1800s. We have been left out again and again. We've been treated like the poor cousins of somebody.
How does it affect our children and our grandchildren? It affects them in the same way as it has affected us, our grandparents and our great-grandparents in the way that they were treated. It doesn't speak to the intent of what section 25 and section 35 are supposed to do.
This is the beginning of a bill. This is just talking about governing ourselves and moving to where we need to in order get to a treaty. If we can't pass this bill, then we're not respecting the Canadian Constitution. We're picking and choosing which nations Canada wants to deal with. We're saying to Métis people, “I'm sorry; you're not quite as important as somebody else.”
That's not right. I hope that when we talk about reconciliation.... I just testified at an APPA meeting on Bill C-29, which is on reconciliation. This is reconciliation in action. Not only does it deal with reconciliation; it also deals with the UNDRIP. It deals with constitutional obligations that Canada has to us. If this bill fails, I believe it would be a tremendous black mark on this beautiful country we call Canada.
You can't pick and choose.