Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank everybody for listening to us today and bringing forward our story and the direction we'd like to take our community. Maybe I could give a shout-out to everybody watching back home—Chief Bear and all of the band members. Rick Gamola sent me a text and said we're doing really well.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, we do have lease agreements in Whitecap. They're 99-year renewable leases. If you wanted to build, say, a home in Whitecap and you wanted to sell it after 10 years you can pay for the 10 years that used and take it up to full value. The housing market would be open to anybody.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think, with our negotiations and dealing with our membership, when we had the ratification vote, we wanted a 100% yes vote and 100% participation. We wanted everybody to understand what we were doing and how good this is for our community. I know that, within the Saskatoon Tribal Council, there are two other first nations that are going to declare.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Anyway, I think it's just communication with the community. Thank you.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's the same thing—ditto, I guess. Yes, our community is pretty excited. We've negotiated for 13 years. For 10 years or so, maybe, there was very little to take back to the community to tell them about what was going on. Everything just took some time. Now it is moving quickly.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I guess maybe I'll get a little personal. Sometimes when there's a dispute with other first nations, they say something like, “Go back to where you came from.” We're from Canada. That's our land and our territory. Once they recognize us as aboriginal peoples of Canada.... That's one of the things that we talked about with our community.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's leadership with Chief Bear, his vision of our community and how we want to build a better quality of life in our community and take the steps. We look at other successful first nations. We go to visit with them and see what they've done, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Councillor. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. I'd like to thank everybody for this opportunity to speak. I'll give just a brief history of the processes with our community. We got a community mandate in 2009. In 2012, we got the framework agreement. In 2017, we got the approval in principle.