Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the presentation by the members and the kinds of problems that the treaty people are having. I think much of it has been clarified by Mr. Paulette.
I wanted to say that when this commission first started I thought it was a bad idea. In my written submission to you I stated the reasons why. Before the interim report I made a submission to you in which I stated the commission travelled into communities and engaged in brief interchange with residents to reminisce as a group of lords. I use that terminology which calls together their subjects to issue and explain a proclamation. I went on to say that commissions were used by the British colonial masters in India and in the Orient to create an illusion of collective decision-making. I then went on to talk about the aboriginal people themselves, their collective rights and the process itself.
After your interim report came out, I also went on to say that the interim report seemed to be based on the model of the status quo, by proposing that there is a central legislation built largely by the same constitutional authorities and principles that presently exist. I went on to say, why do they need to point that out? Since the creation of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories there has never been any substantial support for the political and economic traditions of Dene, Metis and Inuvialuit people. I know that because I am a Member. We operate on concepts which are foreign to our people. Our parliamentary process draws from Westminster in England. It is a system imposed on us by a cultural force that has neither concrete or treaty with native people.
I went on to say that you can change the representative system within the Legislative Assembly, but it is still the same institution, a European institution.
Mr. Hardy said this concept of turning the whole thing and putting it down on its head, the reporting system draws from the community level back up to the head government. However, I would presume that when you say the head government that we are looking at this Legislative Assembly as being the authority where it would go to. We recognize community government which may include the band councils, then onto the regional level and onto the territorial level. We still have one concept of government, that is the difficulty I have with regard to the Assembly.
With regard to what Francois said, we put treaties in there. Why are we putting treaties in there, recognizing treaties? They are not the authority which is going to be doing that. By virtue of it being in here we are consenting to this government that we want to be a part of it and I have some concerns over that. The Deh Cho region has never had any intentions to extinguish their aboriginal or treaty rights. I think by virtue of it being in here we sort of draw ourself into being part of that European concept of government. Most of the laws under the Canadian Constitution are drawn up by provincial governments. The concepts are all the same with regard to their own constitutions. I think having the treaties being recognized implies that the supreme law would be the NWT or this government and that we will recognize the treaty. In my opinion, that is wrong, it should be the other way around.
Those are basically my general comments, Mr. Chairman. It is a good report, I like it. However, Francois touched on it, we are developing around the status quo.