Mr. Speaker, this was a recurring concern. There is a commitment by the government to $250 million per year over a 10 year period, for a full commitment of $2.5 billion. The maximum a claim can be settled for is $150 million. The manner in which the government proposes to proceed is to make payments over a number of years.
There was certainly a lot of concern about the $150 million cap because there are many specific claims that are over and above that. The government laid out that it was within the political accord that this would be dealt with in a political process around the larger claims and other land claims.
However, many of the questions put to the committee were around the fact that it was not in the bill. Why is it not in the bill and why is it that this bill narrows the scope of claims that can be brought forward? It also brought in the release of rights that first nations had to make to participate in this process.
I would also like to mention that within this process the monetary compensation was of extreme concern, as I had mentioned in my speech, so that if a first nation had a specific claim and was participating in the process, the minister would actually have total control and power to decide which claims would go to negotiations, which claims would be rejected and that, within the three year period where there was no response from the minister's office, then it would be deemed rejected. The deemed rejection became another point of concern.
If a claim were to be rejected or deemed rejected, the only opportunity other than litigation would be for the first nation to participate in the tribunal process, which would then deny it compensation in terms of land or non-pecuniary damages and would also be solely in the form of monetary compensation. Those are serious concerns.