Thank you to the witnesses.
This is a topic that we've heard lots of testimony on. I'm very interested in digging down on it.
To reiterate what we've said on this side of the House during this whole process, we agree with the diagnosis, but we have some issues with the prescription. We understand and completely agree that Canada has not lived up to its word of “treaty”—traditional, modern or otherwise—over successive governments. This is not a Liberal and Conservative issue. This is governments in general failing to live up to their signature. We agree with all that, and we would like to see it get better.
We have some concerns with the consequences piece of this legislation. There doesn't seem to be—other than naming and shaming—a piece that has any.... If a department does not follow the word, what happens? The same kind of thing happens with an Auditor General report, whether it be on housing or clean drinking water. We've had so many reports from this committee, but the failures still continue along the line. Nothing seems to change.
While this piece of legislation does create an office and an agent of Parliament that can then zero in on certain issues specifically—whereas the Auditor General maybe has a broader reach—other than a report being tabled in Parliament, which the Auditor General has done, other than naming and shaming and other than maybe presenting facts or laying out an argument for potentially more court cases.... The whole argument was to get rid of these court cases. We've determined through testimony, at least on this side, that the court cases probably won't be stopped because it's basically presenting a case for nations to take the government to court.
Chief Rabesca Zoe, you basically said that this time will be different. Maybe you can elaborate as to how or why this time will be different.