Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Just the other day, we spoke to one of the country's probably most modern Indian agents ever in our history, Michael Wernick. His testimony was extreme in its approach, not just to his time at Privy Council, his advice to cabinet and his advice to the Prime Minister's Office on this tremendous need to move past the Indian Act; he even recommended that it should be abolished within 10 years. Then he criticized the sitting government and said it does not have the will to do what he has recommended.
He's the same gentleman who had largely been the deputy minister for the years that these audits have been presented to them, from 2003 to today under his watch. He then recommended this insidious approach that has largely made up the mandate of the reconciliation process that's undertaken by the government today. This issue he presented, that the courts were being utilized rightly by indigenous people who are seeking justice, was that the government was losing billions of dollars and finding itself in a position where its liability was being challenged, and there needed to be a risk-management approach to this liability. It's a very disgusting way to speak about human rights breaches in our country, to measure things down to who is liable and how the government can risk assess its liability out of this.
These are real conversations that I know are present in your ministry and also between you and the Ministry of Justice. You often get briefing notes from the Ministry of Justice and memorandums that seek to limit the risk that is present in government agreements that you sign on behalf of the Crown with indigenous people.
I'll ask again, who is liable when care and control is transferred to an indigenous government?