Madam Speaker, one of the issues we have dealt with in the northern Treaty 9 region is the incredible inequity faced in the communities themselves. In Attawapiskat, people are literally living almost on top of each other. There are no other communities up there except the Cree, yet the federal government and the provincial government of Doug Ford just refused to sit down to talk about a reserve extension.
However, when De Beers went up to open a diamond mine, all the permitting happened very quickly. What ended up happening was that there was within the community a sense that if the company was coming simply to extract the resources, the government was willing to come to the table. However, when there were basic issues like housing and the right to expand the reserves so we could build livable communities, neither the province, particularly Doug Ford, nor the federal government has come to the table. There are now lawsuits saying that they are going to stop economic development until they get those basic issues of inequity dealt with.