I understand that. Both of those briefs that I referenced and then a number of other indigenous governments who showed up here contested whether these Métis governments are actually indigenous governments.
That is the challenge that we are faced with in regard to this bill. We've seen.... This is hard work. It's tough work to try to establish who is a Métis government, who are Métis individuals and who are Métis communities. These are things that are obvious to see, but when they're getting federal government recognition or entering into treaties with the federal government, it becomes a little more, sometimes, quite disputed as to who is a Métis indigenous government.
It was stated here at this committee that signing a treaty with the MNA is kind of like signing a treaty with the AFN. It's an advocacy organization, not necessarily an indigenous governing body.
That's the challenge, I think, Mr. Chair, around how we.... I think there is a legitimate concern that people have raised here, where the federal government has handed out millions of dollars—from my estimates, more that $75 million—to particular organizations to create them or to establish them as a treaty partner, when that may not have been the case. It's just that they got a whole bunch of money from the federal government, which enabled them to go around collecting members and establishing themselves as a Métis government, but it doesn't necessarily.... The federal government may have been making them out of.... I wouldn't say out of whole cloth, but they were taking what was an advocacy organization and turning it into an indigenous governing body. How do we reconcile that? How do we reference that? That is the crux of it.
I understand that, if we pull this out, we do away with that and that does away with one big chunk of the bill, so maybe that isn't the ideal situation. Perhaps the government should have taken its time a little more or considered the ramifications of handing out millions of dollars to one particular advocacy group, particularly in Alberta, which is the situation that I know best, where we have Métis communities with self governance. To go and then hand out money to the MNA to establish themselves as a government puts up a major competition.
I'll have to think about this a little more as to how we fix this problem.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.