Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's right. It's constitutionally protected.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm glad that you asked that question. One of the things I have been wanting to do is create national institutions that facilitate true self-governance. That means an ability for the institutions to create money to operate themselves. Part of the proposal is to have property transfers so that the land title system would ultimately be self-supporting.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's one of the problems. You have a dispute between CMHC and Aboriginal Affairs over who has responsibility for the provision of houses on reserve lands. Then, to complicate matters even further, you have individuals from your communities and others who say they have a treaty right to a home.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's correct.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, but we're dealing with situations even in Ontario where you've already got lots of leasehold interest. The majority of non-native residents on reserve lands are here in Ontario—the vast majority. So when we talk about having a lace or a checkerboard effect, it's already the situation.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I want to finish answering this question.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In order for a CMHC loan to happen on reserve, the band council has to ask the Minister of Indian Affairs to provide a ministerial guarantee. Even when you go to a bank—there are a couple of banks that provide housing on reserve lands—the band council is asked to backstop that. That's led to a situation where the majority of communities that end up in third-party management are a direct result of individuals not paying back their housing loans, and it's because they don't own it.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There are—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  First, let's go back to “Choosing a Path”. This was, from my understanding, part of the Trudeau government, because of his thoughts about Indian reserves being the model for the apartheid in South Africa. He philosophically didn't agree with apartheid. He wanted to do away with the Indian Act.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  This is why I really liked the announcement in the federal budget that there is going to be more money for education. One of the limiting factors we have is being able to bring students to Tulo to educate them. We have to be very creative in terms of trying to find and create bursaries so that we can have an educated administration.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We've done it through a number of ways, and those ways are getting more and more difficult to pursue, meaning that we don't have the resources to do it but we've found resources to do it—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, I would hope so.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I could go on about all of those....

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  If a community or a leadership chooses to use that approach, I'm not going to argue with that individual. If an individual community or council comes forward and says they want to do this, I'm more than happy to go in and work with them. That's what optionality is all about. It's the freedom of choice.