Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary is absolutely right. It was a seven to zero Supreme Court decision. However, the issue is a deeply flawed Indian Act.
He is quite right. Even if the Supreme Court had wanted to rule in favour, it would have been bound by legislation, which I would argue is out of date, in fact, ancient.
If we were to contemplate amending or doing away with the Indian Act, I referred earlier to the consultation process. There were certainly some benefits in the current consultation process, but the trick always is the kind of a mandate the federal government provides to first nations to operate within that consultation process.
In this legislation we could not address the issues that were raised around the court case simply because the scope of the bill was far too limited. The Stoney Nakoda pointed out the fact that although the two nations lost their Supreme Court cases, there were a number of other court cases around the mishandling of royalties.
This is an opportunity for the government to examine that part of the Indian Act and make changes to it, which would benefit the first nations communities. The government benefits from those resources.