Madam Speaker, I also found the memorandum to cabinet entitled, A Framework for the Implementation of the Inherent Right and Negotiation of Self-Government, dated May 11, 1995, to be a very illuminating document. I should also point out that it was presented to cabinet by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Developed, the Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-status Indians and the Minister of Justice.
In terms of why this document has not been followed, it seems to me that there has been an absence of vision on the part of the government in the negotiation of this agreement. It is a complicated agreement. No one disagrees with that. It is a precedent setting agreement. However, if ever there was a time for the Government of Canada to have had, through its executive branch, a vision of where they are taking Canada in this difficult area, this was the time.
We have not seen that. We will not see public government institutions in the north. Instead, we have an agreement which, I suggest, in the long term will make parts of the Canadian government system unworkable.