Mr. Speaker, I think that question would be better directed to the government.
I cannot possibly think of any reasonable reason for a 20-year delay on living up to commitments under a treaty. The current National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations has said very clearly, as have other first nation leaders of late, particularly through the Idle No More movement, that “we are all treaty people”.
It is not just the first nation peoples, but the Inuit and potentially the Métis, who might sign these treaties or first nation final agreements. We, the people of Canada, under the guise of the federal Crown, also sign on to these agreements. We all have a responsibility to hold our government responsible to live up to what it signs on to in those agreements. We have a responsibility going forward that the government lives up to the terms of this legislation and provides the adequate resources and expertise, so that the peoples of the north can move forward and in fact benefit from the economic development that the Conservative government is chomping at the bit to make happen in the north.