Mr. Speaker, part of the ongoing challenge with land claims agreements and self-government agreements has been the continued lack of long-term funding, or when the windows come up when these agreements need to be reviewed, there is continual foot-dragging. That is one of the reasons that the Land Claims Coalition put forward the model policy that talks on a number of points about the importance of consistent funding.
I talked about the First Nations Education Steering Committee and the B.C. First Nations Education Act, and it is a really good example of something that has now been in place for six years and has not been adequately funded. The Nunavut land claims agreement has been in place for decades and it has taken this long to get this next phase of the agreement implemented through Bill C-47. Even with this, there still has not been that long-term commitment to funding. We simply cannot have the improvement in socio-economic status if we do not have those long-term commitments to funding.
Hopefully we will hear at committee, once we hear from the minister, that the government is committing to that kind of funding to move this next piece of legislation forward.