Thank you.
That's a very broad statement. To go back to the consultation, there are small-c and capital-C consultations. There were certainly no section 35 consultations, and even this committee is not really fulfilling that obligation. It's fulfilling a public consultation process. You need to understand that the duty to consult should certainly have arisen much earlier, particularly where there is a potential for infringement, .
Certainly we don't have the resources and haven't had the resources to do a full and complete analysis of the TPP. We just simply don't have those resources. We focused in on the ISDS because it's the one that we believe could drive a wedge between Canada and first nations with respect to the notion of true reconciliation, which was also one of the key promises of the Liberal government and one of the reasons they did get some support among first nations.
If this agreement, and particularly that chapter, limits in any way the ability or fetters in any way the ability of the Canadian government to exercise its full constitutional obligations, then that's a really significant problem, particularly with respect to exploitation of natural resources within first nations traditional territories, so yes, that needs to be looked at very carefully. There really needs to be absolute certainty that there's no fettering of the ability of the Canadian government to fulfill its constitutional obligations to protect treaty and aboriginal rights, and that clarity is not there at this point in time.
As for some of the other clauses relating to either the environment or local contracting and the ability to protect jobs through preferential kinds of treatments—and in the case of the fishing industry, to be able to develop subsidies—those also need to be examined.