Madam Speaker, the Minister had indicated that he doesn't want to talk about jurisdiction and authority, at this time. He wants to get on with the administration. What it appears to mean is that he wants to get into the practical measures of communities, and in this case bands, to take on the day-to-day task of administering and running the programs and services. In his view, that is what is going to make a day-to-day difference in the lives of people, and not signing agreements that recognize theoretical terms like self-government and sovereignty and those types of things. That appears to be what he is saying.
In that regard, we have indicated to Treaty 8 a number of times that if they wish to talk community transfer initiative, we're prepared to talk. We know that in the case of at least one community, Lutsel K'e, it is very possible for us to get on with the administrative set-up of transfers, because Lutsel K'e is almost 90 per cent treaty Dene. It's the notion of trying to make it bilateral that would make community transfers not realistic for the Treaty 8 groups. They are not interested in doing administrative set-ups at this time, but they want to establish that programs and services will flow between the federal government and the First Nations.
So the community transfer initiative, as it is now, is not in the interest of Treaty 8 to engage in. Regardless of that, we're prepared to help them with getting on with negotiations with the federal government. We don't expect that we will be funding any of these initiatives since it is bilateral and Treaty 8 has shown very little interest, other than getting us to help by coordinating and supporting their initiatives of asking for funds. We see it as largely a bilateral process. Thank you.