Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I don't know. Most of the people are probably Laura's relatives, so maybe Laura can answer that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  A number of people are interested in the community we're becoming. I found, too, that while some people are concerned about some of our off-reserve members voting on decisions that affect those on-reserve, they seem to have great capacity and great experience in all different kinds of fields, and they're interested in coming back to the community and sharing their knowledge and expertise.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  For the treaty to be most beneficial and to really represent reconciliation, it's extremely important to us to have all parties support it and have strong support in Parliament. The sooner we can get it ratified, the sooner we know that we can implement it, and we really look forward to doing that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I don't know; I think, as I stated earlier, we will be fairly close to economically self-sufficient for the programs and services we deliver to our community. I hope we'll have closed the gap on employment and education. Some of these issues are very long-term, though, so we're going to work as hard as we can to ensure that we close those gaps.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The land is definitely the most valuable aspect of the treaty from an economic development perspective. We're beating back developers with a stick already, and in some ways it's good we don't have water. We have time to get our land use plan in place, to sort out our priorities before we start entertaining different proposals.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, certainly not. In the major developments, we would look at employment and spinoff opportunities as a priority. I think, though, we're looking at all kinds of schemes to ensure that individuals can participate in whatever sector they want to. We want an economy that has a number of sectors within it so that we don't put all our eggs in one basket, per se.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. They want to realize economic opportunities on their lands as well. We need to have zoning in place so that pig farms don't go up beside residential areas and those sorts of things.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  On the land use planning, part of the difficulty has been that we didn't really know what land base we could plan for until the treaty was ratified. Since the treaty was ratified, we moved right into trying to start a land use planning process, but because so much hinges on water pipe sizes, what is the future sewer infrastructure going to be?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's been longer than 20 years, but certainly the last bit of struggle has been since we developed the Tsatsu Shores Condominium in the early 1990s.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It depends how far we go and how densely we build. We are preserving land for community housing purposes. We still have to plan certain parameters. We have to look at how many people it will provide housing for over what period of time. But for sure, it's a land use planning priority.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. Not all of them are integrated quite willingly, but we're doing our best to come up with a land use plan that everyone can support.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It will be an official community plan for zoning, similar to what municipalities have.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Right.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Right now we have about 380 members. A little over half of them would be on the reserve right now. Many members have said they would like to come back if there were land for housing or employment or economic opportunities, I think it's safe to say. Earlier on in treaty negotiations, we did population growth projections that showed, based on our current rate of growth, that our population will increase dramatically.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Part of the biggest challenge is the general public's fear of the unknown. I found in Tsawwassen their biggest fear is, “Will they expect us to fail in relation to land use decisions?” I was surprised when many of the environmentalists and those sorts of groups, which are generally known to be more supportive of aboriginal people, were worried about some of the land-use decisions we'll be making as time unfolds.