I would like to go back....
I too am struck by what you said during your testimony, Chief Peters. We should be the ones who define who we are. At the same time, in your last back-and-forth with Mr. Battiste, you talked about many issues and concerns. It's so hard to address them all. Surely, the context of being the ones who define who we are should be the pathway to having better capacity to address the many concerns that are hitting you all at once.
In this study, the option being presented before us is the one that has come through the Senate amendments. It is a universal single-parent rule, but it's still administered through the Indian Act. I'm somewhat troubled by the process, even though I think we all share the same goal. I know the minister shares the same goal as well. She gave pretty powerful testimony at the Senate committee. She said, “I understand the unfairness of second generation. In my own family, I have members who face this. I want you to know that this is very personal to me. This is something very important to me.”
She is the first indigenous Minister of Indigenous Services. We have a minister who is committed to seeing us through this, getting this done and getting to a more just place. I feel pretty confident about that, but I'm more concerned about how we get there and how we get there in the right way. To me, the gold standard is co-developed legislation. That's how I think we should be developing legislation, such as we have with Bill C-10, the modern treaty commissioner bill, and with the previous clean water act in the last Parliament that we didn't get to carry through. I hope we will reintroduce it soon as co-developed legislation.
That's the context I'd like you to reflect on, Chief Peters. It's this importance of being the ones who define who we are, which could apply to both citizenship and status. Could there be another solution that could transfer control over citizenship and status out of the Indian Act and into the jurisdiction of the Mi'kmaq or other first nations around the country? I would like you to reflect on that.