Thank you for your question. It's an important one because, as I stated, it doesn't just impact indigenous peoples; it impacts the rest of Canada, including environmentalists, unions, women's groups, and children's advocates.
We have to get real about what the clear and present danger is here. How many Canadians have died from acts of terrorism on Canadian soil? Compare that with how many thousands of murdered and missing indigenous women and girls there are. Where is the Bill C-51 to protect them? How many husbands have killed their wives? How many serial killers have we had? Yet, we are focusing on Bill C-51.
The problem is that this bill isn't really about terrorism. If you do an analysis of this omnibus bill, the focus is, just as you've said, less about being anti-terrorism and more about protecting the status quo in terms of power relations and economic relations. This new national security law focuses on threats to sovereignty, territorial integrity, diplomatic relations—of all things—economic stability, and critical infrastructure. All of these things are an essential part of the daily lives of Canadians and first nations. Passing this bill for any activity, any person, any purpose that threatens national security so defined as financial stability and territorial integrity makes us all suspects.
Canada won't even have to pass this bill; the terrorists will have won. What is terrorism? Fundamentally, it's the denial of life, liberty, and security of the person. If Canada goes ahead and takes those rights away, terrorists just have to sit back, job done.
We worked far too hard in our treaty negotiations, the development of the charter and the Constitution, and all of the international laws that protect core, fundamental human rights, to allow that to happen because we want to protect some corporate economic interests.