Grand Chief Math'ieya Alatini at the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee

I will answer that.

I think having the commissioner would allow for a consistent opportunity across departments to create the dialogue and the relationships.

When new funds are being created, as one of the examples, there's always this provision for “on reserve”. Modern treaties are not on reserve. We need modern treaty language built into all new funding that gets developed. That's one of the challenges that modern treaties consistently have to be lobbied for. If we could have somebody who's actually keeping an eye on that, it would save everybody a lot of time.