Madam Speaker, I want to quickly remind people what the former grand chief of the Tlicho government said at the hearing. He stated:
It took 13 years of negotiations, negotiations with Canada and the GNWT, to arrive at the compromise that could have true co-management in the Wek'eezhii region, what we call the heart of the territory...
The board works and it works well, but Bill C-15 wants to take all that away. It wants to destroy what took so long to build. It wants to do so with no rational reason whatsoever. Bill C-15 seeks to destroy the Wek'eezhii Land and Water Board. It wants to terminate it and replace it with a super-board with jurisdiction over the whole Mackenzie Valley.
I think everyone would agree that our board systems work well. They are effective and efficient. We are not sure why we would try to fix something that is not broken.
Would the member agree that we should leave the system that is in place, retract what the Conservatives put in the bill, and let the boards operate with the northerners in charge?