Thank you, Chair.
Thank you for your powerful presence and words here, and also for highlighting Métis Crossing in my riding in Lakeland and the project going on there. I am certainly proud to represent the four Métis settlements in Lakeland, as well as the Métis people who are members of the Métis Nation of Alberta right across the region I come from. Your testimony struck near and dear to my heart. All those Métis communities are, as you thoroughly outlined, involved in one way or another in energy development in my backyard and all throughout Lakeland.
You noted—and I have some questions for you about this—that, in 2016, it was affirmed that Métis and Inuit peoples have section 35 rights, and this corresponds to the federal Crown's irrefutable duty to consult.
I want to note that, during the debates on Bill C-69, Conservatives supported the Liberals' claim that they were going to deliver capacity funding for indigenous people's full participation in the regulatory process in Canada.
I would like to know whether, since all that time, that capacity funding has flowed to communities on the ground. Has it made a difference in terms of the development of Bill C-5? That's also extremely important. The Prime Minister says that indigenous people are at the core of Bill C-5. I raised many concerns relating to indigenous consultation and the Crown's delivery of their duty during the debates on that. Has that been your experience?
Maybe you could touch on those two things, since they are interrelated, I think.