Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to be before the committee today. Just as you have acknowledged, we too acknowledge that we're on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin people. I'm pleased to be joined today by the deputy minister of Indigenous Services Cana

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The order in council came into effect at the end of November 2017. Obviously, the legislation would come into effect, if approved. It formalizes the decisions that were made through the order in council, but more importantly, it's a very clear signal this is not simply a short-te

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  From my perspective there are two things, but I would like to add a little bit to my colleague's earlier answer regarding the rationale. It's very hard to go and tell somebody in the morning, “Listen, I'll get back to you in two years about your dog-catching bylaw and let you kno

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The corresponding number for CIRNAC is 186 FTEs, the difference between today and November 30, 2017, the same time frame my colleague was speaking about. Again, that's not necessarily related to the transformation because as programs come and go, staff come and go with them each

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  November 30....

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's an increase, yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The total is 2,850.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Excellent question. Thank you very much for it. In the first instance, the main responsibility we have is to negotiate agreements and treaties that will actually undo the application of either of our two departments to those communities. I think, in the first instance, that is t

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  One of the commitments we have is to work seamlessly with each other. Again, even on the concept of “northern”, that varies in many different places. Sometimes people talk about “the territories”, and sometimes it includes Labrador, northern Quebec and northern Ontario, as well

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's an excellent question. Built into the legislation for CIRNAC, for example, is the expectation that we work with provinces, territories and others. I think a good part of the responsibility of the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs is going to b

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would add to that. I spent a decade of my career working for provincial governments. Two of the biggest departments in any provincial government are health and social services. They consume an inordinate amount of time of that government's thinking. To have all of that activity

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Sure. When you're in the business of changing relationships, no matter what the domain is, you're really helping people to see themselves differently and see the impact that they've had on the relationship differently. That is one of the hardest human things to do. It may seem

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  All of us collectively have to see this. We're different parties that bring different perspectives to it. For far too long, the former Department of Indian Affairs occupied all of the space in deciding what was the right thing in the future historically. As we move forward, when

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We go back to something that my colleague said. It has to be in the outcomes. I think part of the outcomes now we understand and it's set out in this legislation. We begin building those outcomes by actually having the conversation at the outset of where we're headed. I think tha

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I don't think everything is right and that everything is wrong. But certainly there's a lot of wrong. You just have to go to the court cases to find out how wrong we were in a number of those instances. Certainly I think many of the things that we did we would choose deliberately