I would just say that the committee was very keen, if possible, to find an indigenous candidate. There's still the challenge of language; there is bilingual functional ability among indigenous people, sometimes with lawyers who are still junior.
I said the last time that I believe that within the next four or five years we will see an indigenous candidate for the Supreme Court of Canada. I also think that there has been a very significant recognition of the importance of non-indigenous justices on the court being literate in these issues. For example, the Honourable Malcolm Rowe comes from Newfoundland and Labrador, where that is not an area of the law that is necessarily well developed. Through his own involvement in an organization called Action Canada, which had taken him across the country, he had gotten to know the indigenous leaders in Haida Gwaii, Nunavut and other places. He was very curious and very interested and very cognizant of the importance. Justice Sheilah Martin is hugely respected by indigenous communities and has taken that area of the law as something very important to her.
It's less an issue in Quebec, because the issues are not so well developed in the law there, but certainly in western Canada and Ontario and Atlantic Canada it is. I think what we're seeing is a growth of indigenous people as lawyers but also a growing recognition on the part of non-indigenous lawyers and jurists that this is an area that they must engage in. For example, when I was the minister of justice, I convened a national symposium on aboriginal justice with the Minister of Justice of the Yukon. The thinking has changed dramatically since then, such that we are looking at not just understanding aboriginal rights as they are in the constitution, but also this whole indigenization of our legal thinking.
These are exciting and challenging times, and we have people in the country who can make great contributions to this. I firmly believe that this will be seen in the Supreme Court of Canada, but the Supreme Court is not the only place where these skills and talents are very valuable in terms of the development of our legal system and culture.