I believe it's both. Looking for recognition will then lead to those other things down the road that will impact us, but it also impacts us now—giving them recognition—because they're already asserting those things. It's not about the future. This is happening now. They're getting money from the province for education. They're getting money for child welfare. They're getting housing dollars for social housing. All of that is earmarked for indigenous people.
What we're saying is that this further entrenches their position and their rights to section 35, without any due diligence, without making sure that the people who are given these rights are actually the people who deserve these rights. Some of them may, under our communities and first nations, and should be acknowledged, but to actually say “under the guise of Métis people” is really not the proper channel.
Even the Métis National Council is having difficulty in trying to find whom exactly they represent, as well as the Métis federations of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. None of these organizations, to my knowledge, recognize them as being the Métis people of Canada.
What we're saying is that it's now, and it's also down the road. The fight just gets harder for us down the road, because it will be recognized in Canadian law that these people, legitimate or not, are recognized as an indigenous group in our territory.