Thank you, Mr. Chair. My first real job was doing mapping, doing traditional land use and occupancy mapping with elders and traditional harvesters and storytellers and people, my people, who basically made the land their home. Their land was basically their life.

I have, perhaps, a fairly good understanding of the PAS movement since its inception, how it was drafted out, how it was processed, and so I have observed some of the evolution of the whole initiative. In some ways, I have seen a lot of its failures, and I have seen some of its successes in some respects. At the same time, I think that we have come a long way. The way that I understand this, reminding myself, is that we have Indigenous colleagues who played a hand in working the draft, in terms of laying the foundation of, at least, the spirit and principle of the draft legislation.

A lot of the drafting of the wording, if there was anybody who dotted their i's and crossed their t's, it was working groups who involved governments and Indigenous leaders. There is a presumption that someone did their due diligence and that what we have before us is their efforts. I think that we have done all that we can, but there has to be a level of assurances.

As I have said, one community that I know of worked very hard on protected areas initiatives and waited for approval for at least 10 years, and they are still waiting. I am hoping that what we have crafted together, collaboratively with First Nations and governments, will change that and that will at least lay the foundation for the landscape and environmental and ecological initiatives, so that the land that we want protected will become part of the process, and we will see it through.

I am not prepared to support this amended motion. Mahsi.