Uqaqtittiji, when I was at INAN, one of the first things I always wanted to ensure that we did in our reports of our studies was to remind parliamentarians that indigenous peoples were in Canada before Canada was created, since time immemorial. Before colonialism, first nations and Inuit were taking care of these lands using their practices. During our management of it, there were not as many disasters as we see now.
In our decision-making as parliamentarians, the guidance we give to bureaucrats and the national work that is done to implement other activities in international law, we always need to make sure we are using indigenous knowledge, indigenous traditional knowledge, in the same way that science is being used. Indigenous knowledge is science, and we need to make sure decision-making is based on indigenous expertise, expertise we have had since time immemorial.