Mr. Speaker, I represent a part of Canada, northwestern British Columbia, that has a great number of first nations communities. There are villages, from the coast, all the way to the interior, the north, and the middle of the province.

There are a number of concerns and constraints that we have been raising with the current government and the previous government for many years. Generations of first nations people have suffered under a more patronizing form of governance in which Ottawa says it knows best.

One of the conditions set out that the member believes has been met is that there is no unilateral control kept by the minister. My question is this. With regard to this joint council being meant to advise the minister, on two parts, the unilateral control concerns me. One is that the minister does all the appointing and firing of that council. It is not done in consultation with anybody. He just chooses who the advisers are. They may be first nations or they may not. It does not matter. The minister, in this act, under what he is voting for, does this.

The second piece about this council is that if we are going to take the advice from this council, none of it is binding. The council can say that these are what the improvements need to be for first nations education, and the minister sitting in Ottawa, with the way that the act is drawn up right now, can say absolutely not, and there is no consequence.

I hear the member's words and the sincerity around wanting to put more control and determination in first nations communities, wherein the solutions lie, not in Ottawa, yet when I read the bill, I struggle with reconciling my friend's words and what the government has written in the text and the law. It gives the minister unilateral power to decide what happens with first nations education. That is the fundamental crux of the argument.

I would like my friend to respond.

Nathan Cullen

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