Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today on our progress in implementing treaty land entitlement agreements in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The department is proud to note that the recent Auditor General's report on this subject recognizes the impro

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  He will be here, and he's not usually late. Something must have held him up. My apologies.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll start and then I'll get Paul or Martin to provide some additional details. First of all, with respect to the difference between Saskatchewan and Manitoba, as you might have gathered from reading the audit, the whole process is really quite complex in terms of what we're try

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The difference is that there is more to be done with respect to the lands in Manitoba than there is in Saskatchewan. There are more processes, more things that are required to be done, so it does take longer. There are also additional differences with respect to some of the third

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We're not absolutely sure, so if you don't mind, we'll get a written response to your question with respect to the actual tax treatment. We can guess, but I'd much prefer to get back to you with accurate--

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's a highly complex process and there are many parts to it. One of the things we're trying to do to particularly help with that part of the process is this work that we're doing with NALMA. It's more sort of a manual, templates, to assist first nations in doing the due diligenc

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's certainly the hope.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  From a perspective of continuous improvement, the more data we have and that we're sure about, the more and better we can do going forward. That's in terms of seeing what our progress has or has not been, what we need to do differently, and where the bottlenecks appear to be, and

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm not aware of that. We've been trying to focus on getting the process working more effectively. On the side of economic development, as you may be aware, last fall the lands process and responsibility were pulled in with economic development and put in the same sector. This wa

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We would not be able to comment upon the methodology of the Auditor General. We're here and are happy to talk about her findings and the very important issues that we're trying to work on, but we would not be able to comment on her methodology.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As you can see, sometimes we're held up because lands have not been selected. It is difficult to process them until we know what and where they are and so on.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think the challenge we have in answering that question is that there are a lot of moving parts that haven't stopped yet. For example, we're embarking on consultations with the Assembly of First Nations with respect to legislation and so on that could significantly help the proc

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We'll get you a formal update on that. I know there has been a lot of work done on it and there have been discussions across the federal government in terms of how we want to proceed, but we'll get you a formal update in terms of the actual stage of development.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In the office of one of my staff, there is a pictorial representation of the entire process. It literally goes from ceiling to floor and is dense. I mean, there's just so much that has to happen, with so many different stages and so on. It really is a business process re-engineer

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's an interesting question. I think a lot of it depends upon how the community uses the results from the negotiated settlements. There have been some really wonderful success stories in which they have used--for example, if it was moneys--investing in community activity and