When it comes to implementation, it depends on the topic. You deal with the departmental people. You go from department to department on whatever the issue is. There is no consistent one-departmental approach.
Before, Indian Affairs used to oversee discussions. Now when it comes to health, you have to talk to Health Canada. When it comes to procurement, you have to talk to procurement people, Public Works. If you want to talk about an RCMP issue, you have to talk to them. There is no consistent approach. Because of that, there are no reporting requirements in a lot of cases.
We do try to do our own thing, to make sure that as treaty partners we're consistently making sure that we have a whole-of-government approach, but when your treaty partner doesn't have that, it makes it very difficult. It prolongs things. There's misinterpretation, and you're up against different policies and procedures.
With a treaty commissioner to help oversee some of these things—to make things more efficient and effective and to deal with things in a timely and expeditious manner—I think you can avoid litigation in a lot of cases. It's really the things you go to litigation over—the misunderstanding, the misinterpretation and the policy questions—where a lot of departments don't understand their treaty obligation because it's a whole-of-government treaty. Some of these departments don't really understand that they have obligations in the agreement and that they should be at these tables in discussions with us.
These are the kinds of things we are hoping to alleviate as much as possible, along with avoiding litigation, because it doesn't really solve anything other than.... I have nothing against lawyers—I'm a lawyer—but you know....