Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Recommendation number three is that the scope of claims be expanded to include all legal obligations arising from the fiduciary relationship and the honour of the crown, including pre-Confederation treaties. Recommendation number four, is that Canad

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  If I could, Mr. Chair, my name is Chief Randall Phillips. I will be doing most of the presentation. I have invited a councillor and elder from our community, Olive Elm, and she will also be doing part of the presentation.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  [Witness speaks in the Oneida language] Good afternoon. I want to thank everybody for the opportunity to present our views on this bill to this committee. First of all, I want to start by saying that I'm the elected chief of our community. I say “elected”, and I make that disti

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  —which we hear a lot of from the crown. Maybe the principles of compensation and restitution for first nations losses should be guiding this process. Once those have been addressed, then possibly we could move forward in a form of reconciliation. The Oneida Nation of the Thames

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. To me, the answer is simple. It's that we already have a traditional governance that had signed treaties here. Those are the people we're talking to; those are the people this government should sit down and try to deal with to resolve these issues.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. In response to your question, I think what we're looking at is that the tribunal itself is inappropriate. So with regard to this notion that the limitations or restrictions on what authorities the tribunal does have could be tinkered with, we're suggesting

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Difficult question; I appreciate it. I don't think I need to take as much time as the member wants me to take to answer it, but I'm going to repeat what I said earlier. To resolve these things you must go back and deal with the bodies that originally

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. The position of the Oneida Nation of the Thames is that this particular bill will be useless in terms of resolving any of our issues with respect to claims, and it should be withdrawn. I don't think that another independent body doing alternative dispute re

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think going back to what the question was, would there be challenges if this were passed, since we don't accept the bill on its face, since it's not going to provide us with any benefit, then I would say, yes, there will be challenges. We've said there ar

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to give a quick response and then I'm going to see whether or not my counterpart here can add something of a more technical background. One of the things I did say about the inappropriateness of the tribunal was based on the objection that we don'

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'd like to give a partial response to some of the earlier questions and then ask Martin to conclude on that. On how this bill was moved forward, I suggest that the crafters of the bill were careful to address those types of things in its design--to put it in a flavour that make

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I have a really quick response. I certainly cannot speak for the other communities and say whether or not this is an advantage for them to move forward. I only suspect that if I had the opportunity to explain to them what our concerns are with th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Quickly, in terms of that response, there seems to be some assumption that the process is worth saving now. What's stopping this backlog of 800 claims? It's certainly not first nations communities; it's the honour of the government. So when it com

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Welcome, Madam Chair, and welcome, committee members. [Member spoke in Oneida] My name is Randall Phillips, and I am currently the elected chief at the Oneida Nation of the Thames. It is an Oneida community. It is located about 25 kilometres southwest of London, Ontario. It's a