Evidence of meeting #85 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was mna.
A video is available from Parliament.
5:35 p.m.
Interim National Chief, Assembly of First Nations
The AFN advocates on behalf of first nations, but we believe there are rights of other indigenous groups, so that's not our concern. It's just the process the government went through to get this bill through. It needs to be stopped and started. I'm not saying that we scrap the whole thing; we can take it and use it, but we need to start at the beginning here and do it right. We don't want to have to go to court and fight with the government.
5:35 p.m.
NDP
Lori Idlout NDP Nunavut, NU
Qujannamiik. My question will be for Adam.
Maybe a subclause can be added under clause 8 to say that if there is a dispute about who is authorized to represent the Métis, that a dispute resolution will be added. Would that also be sufficient to make sure that while we're recognizing the important right of Métis to self-government, there could be a recognition that a dispute resolution might need to happen among different Métis groups?
Qujannamiik.
5:35 p.m.
President, Métis Nation of Alberta Association Local 2003
I'm going to confer with my colleague, Ms. Bernard, representing the Assembly of First Nations. We may seem like we have different approaches on this, but I concur that we need to go back to the start, because we really can't bifurcate this. I could take this back to our leadership, and I could speak on it at this point, but it is inherently problematic.
I think it would be a start for us to work with pieces of the bill. We could look at non-derogation clauses and dispute resolution clauses when it comes to making sure that these rights aren't encroaching either on other indigenous groups or on our historic Métis communities, as a start. We could look at what that looks like.
I don't think we could commit at this point to seeing something broadly to say that there's a dispute resolution process, because, with respect to our member, there hasn't been enough trust built in the process by consulting with us from the beginning. I'm a linguist, not a lawyer. Until I see it and study it, and until I convince our elders and others to engage our legal teams to actually look at it, we'd be careful not to commit to anything at this point.
5:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John Aldag
Thank you.
We are out of time. I would like to thank all of our witnesses for being here today. Again, your insights are very important as we undergo consideration of Bill C-53.
Colleagues, with that, we are now adjourned for today.