Mr. Speaker, that was an excellent question, but this may not be as simple as the member thought. On the one hand, we want to make sure that first nations people, like all diverse groups, have the same rights, the same opportunities, the same ability to progress, the same health care and the same ability to advance in education that all other people do.
On the other hand, we do not want to treat an entirely different culture with a cookie cutter approach in saying that the culture has to follow all our philosophies, our way of governing, our way of doings things and our way of solving disputes. As members who deal with aboriginal people know, they have a collective type of society where they want buy-in by their whole community. They often have consensus decision making processes. Other people do not.
Respecting their culture and their stewardship over land that they have kept sacred, viable and environmentally clean for thousands of years is what the land claim process is all about. It is not about saying that they have to follow our philosophy. It is saying that we will set up a space to govern themselves in the way and with the philosophies that they have seen fit to use over hundreds of years.
In the cases where that has been put in place by Parliament and Canadians, we see huge success stories as they deal with their own problems in their own way. They govern themselves, as people should in a democratic society, and they have the land and the resources to do it, especially appreciating the very close association with the land in the spirit of the aboriginal peoples, which is so much a part of their being.