Thank you for the question.

I think what you're describing is very much the reality that motivated some of the policy shifts we've seen over the last number of years, beginning in 2017 with the recognition of rights and the self-determination process and those tables. This is where the Haida agreement emerged from. This was recognizing that the comprehensive claims policy, which has been in place since 1986 and amended a few times along the way, wasn't meeting the needs of partners. Many groups were not coming to the table in the first place. The Haida entered the treaty process in 1986, I think, and the B.C. treaty process in 1993. They weren't making progress, so their litigation was filed in 2002. At the time, the federal policy was that either you negotiate or you litigate; we didn't do both.

With the rights recognition approach, with the passing of UNDA, federal policy approach has shifted where we are now moving towards incremental approaches and the possibility of being able to negotiate some things—not everything—while litigation can continue. It's something that partners, AFN and others, have called for, the repeal of the comprehensive claims policy. There was an effort in 2017 with the framework, but we're still working on it. It's difficult to get consensus on an issue like that at the national scale, but working with willing partners at the various tables, we are able to make some incremental progress.

What we're seeing here with Bill S-16 is something that's never been done before. It is a novel approach among the approaches we have. I think now we have over 125 recognition of rights tables across the country where we are piloting interest-based approaches to negotiations, which will get away from some of those barriers that communities have faced in the past.

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