Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will begin by offering my greetings to the committee. Thank you for inviting me to appear. Briefly, by way of introduction, I am a retired professor of law, which I taught for a few decades, mostly in Canada and Australia. I've focused on law and polic

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  One has to be very careful with these amendments.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. I'll have a look to see which are, perhaps, the most significant points. Some cleaning up needs to be done with respect to the proposal regarding intoxicants. There's an ambiguity as to the continuing authority of a chief and council to make laws with respect to into

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. This is an extremely interesting subject, and I'll say yea on one side and nay on the other. It's my professional opinion that should the matter be litigated, the courts would not conclude there was a duty to consult in respect to the proposed legislation. I emphasize

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I have the impression, I hope, that supports your observation about the relative uniformity of wills legislation. But my point would be that when the wills legislation was originally enacted by the provinces—and this is old law in all the commonwealth jurisdictions—it was not en

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. No, it's not the same thing. “Representatives” is my attempt to use a neutral term. Who are the legitimate representatives of the treaty first nations? It's up to the treaty first nations to decide that. I don't wish to refer to any particular organization. I leave

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, I do. It should simply be “First Nations”. You're dealing with first nations and their representatives, whoever they might be. The only way to deal with a first nation is to call an assembly of the entire communities, which is probably not what you want to contemplate. It'

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There will be two parts to my response. First, generally, what is consultation? What is good consultation? I would refer committee members to the description by the late Chief Justice Brian Dickson, in his formal published report to Prime Minister Mulroney, when he made his reco

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  These were the objectives that were viewed as appropriate in 1876, when the members of the Canadian Parliament believed that indigenous people, Indian people, were going to become extinct. They were setting up a system to deal with the extinction of Indian people, to pursue assim

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I haven't seen anything in respect to reorganizing government institutions yet.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would, subject to the general comment that I made before, in my opening remarks.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think it would be ill-advised to try to do that in one bill that is aimed at some particular sections. I think it should be done by having a look at the entire structure and the relationship between the administrative authority of the minister, on the one hand, and the authorit

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, there are a number of provisions—