I hear what people are saying about.... I hear the concerns. We've heard testimony from different people saying that they don't want to be lumped in with this. As we've heard from our technicians, nothing in this legislation or this schedule is making someone who doesn't want to be represented be represented by these groups.
However, what this legislation intends to do with self-government is allow these people in this schedule to determine for themselves who they are, how their governance structure works and how they can ratify it moving forward. For us as a committee to get in front of them and say that we know best for them—how to define themselves, how to govern themselves.... That's not what this legislation is. This legislation is meant to give them the ability to determine that, so any discussion on this committee about making amendments to the schedule is basically a very paternal look and is saying that we know better than they do in how to define them.
I know that's not the intention of the committee. However, when we get to the schedule, this is what the stakeholders are very much telling us and this is what our technicians are telling us. It's not for us to get in front of this legislation and determine for them how they define themselves.
We're going to have to vote against anything that amends that schedule or takes the approach that we as a committee know better than the organizations about the work they have to do after this legislation is introduced. We just can't get in front of the important work they have to do on this and say that we know better than they do about who they represent, how they represent them and the work that needs to be done to ratify this to ensure that these treaties....
This is the next step on these treaties, and we're trying to get ahead of that, so as the government we can't support anything that paternally tells them how we think they should be defined.