Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I recognize that in certain regions of the country it's much more difficult to get some things done than in other areas of the country. There is economic activity going on. Again, I would refer you to the Inuvialuit to speak to that. But I don't think the expectation is that the government would deliver an economy.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, I would totally agree with the member's comments that 20-plus years later you'd expect that there would have been a plan and that much of the plan would have been implemented successfully. I totally agree. If you have the chance to have senior officials from the department here, they'll obviously put things in context.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, no, we don't talk about self-government in the context of this report, because as members will know, that's currently a matter of negotiation. They're still in those discussions with government. As auditors, we wouldn't want to interfere with how those things are being negotiated.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, Mr. Chairman, I'll try. Within the agreement, you have the three broad objectives: cultural values, economic issues, and environmental-related issues. When you look at the specific obligations and activities within the details of the agreement, most relate to economic issues and the environment.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Certainly, Mr. Chairman, if that's the wish of the committee, I'm sure the Auditor General would pay full attention to that. There may be value, however, in any future hearings that your committee may have, in asking the department to elaborate in terms of the weaknesses that we've observed in relation to the implementation of this agreement, to get some assurance from the department that those weaknesses don't also reside in the other agreements.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Possibly, but we are very busy. We have, obviously, a full slate of work, but as I mentioned, when the Auditor General receives a request from a committee, although often we're not able to respond to it immediately because everyone is busy on other audits, we take those requests very seriously.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, the issues are pretty clear in the report. I certainly wouldn't go beyond that. We've boiled it down to what we think the major issues are: government has signed those agreements; people expect them to implement them and implement them fully; and they need to put the resources to it and to measure their own progress to make sure they're on course.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  These are excellent questions, Mr. Chair. I do believe that INAC senior officials would be much better placed to answer some of those questions as to whether or not they have adequate resources and how they allocate these resources. Certainly I think the implementation of those agreements needs to be the higher priority within the department.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, they knew we were here, and I would never want to understate the effect of having an audit in the building. Perhaps I could just take a second and point out to members something that I think is quite important and would be worthy of further exploration with the Department of Indian Affairs, and that is, in paragraph 3.83 on page 27, during the course of our audit, certainly departmental officials....

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I totally agree. It's a land claim agreement, and I think you can see from the cases where errors were made how difficult if not impossible it has been for the department to correct its own errors. I think that speaks to the question.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think the first part of the question, in terms of the impact on the Inuvialuit, would be better answered by representatives of the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation. But I think it's fair to say that from what we've observed, the ongoing disagreements and pushing and trying to get things implemented causes frustration.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, the focus of the audit was to understand the agreement, first of all. So we talked with Inuvialuit and we talked with Indian and Northern Affairs officials. Then we selected, I believe, 29 of the significant obligations and simply audited the extent to which the federal government had met its obligations.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, the access of the Inuvialuit to government contracting has not been a success in this report. That's not to say that there isn't healthy economic activity accounting beyond this particular agreement. One of the provisions in the agreement required the government to inform the Inuvialuit of contracts that were being let in that region.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The specifics relate only to this agreement, but it speaks to a broader issue, Mr. Chair, that when the Government of Canada negotiates a land claim agreement, it can often obligate other parts of government to behave in a certain way. It's really important that when we sign a land claims agreement that communication happens and Public Works and Treasury Board are informed, so that people know what has been agreed to by the Government of Canada and how that must affect their behaviour.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. I don't know enough, Mr. Chairman, about the northern Quebec agreement to know whether the member's talking about the recent signature, the recent amendments that were signed to it. Certainly that's an agreement that was initially signed in the 1970s. When parliamentary committees ask the Auditor General to look into subjects, I know that she always pays attention to what members of Parliament have to say, particularly when it comes from a committee.