Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague. He has expertise on the Far North and brings that expertise to the work of the indigenous affairs committee.
Today we are discussing the amendment the NDP brought forward to help fix the motion being debated, because what we have been asked to vote on in the House does not include the obligation to negotiate, discuss, and meet with indigenous community leaders, as well as the municipalities. The reason it is important to put this in the motion is that we hear all the time that we are going to talk with indigenous communities who have traditional economic knowledge. Yet when it comes to federal environmental assessments, issues are rubber-stamped without the involvement of the communities. The government can approve the LNG pipeline while ignoring the five hereditary chiefs who came to Ottawa to discuss it.
New Democrats think it is really important that this be written into our obligation as parliamentarians. If we are going to move toward ratifying the Paris accord as a nation, we need to include the first peoples, who have been left out, for example, of the health accords. They were not involved. We need to change this nation-to-nation relationship and it has to be done in a concrete manner.
I would ask my colleague if he will support the New Democrat amendment to make sure that these negotiations involve indigenous communities and their leaders.