Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Edmonton—Strathcona for her question. She knows far more about these issues than I do.
In terms of the duty to consult, we run across this issue with both the federal and the provincial governments all the time in British Columbia, where duty to consult means the duty to ask questions only and not to listen to the answers. If they do listen to the answers, the duty stops there; it is not a duty to consider the impacts of those answers and to actually make accommodations that will guarantee that first nations' rights are recognized and respected in a meaningful manner and not just in a kind of drive-by consultation whereby someone shouts out the window, “What do you think?” and then continues on their merry way down the same highway.
What it really requires is talking together and working together with people to find a new path that will accommodate the best interests of all those involved in the process.