Thank you, Mr. Chair. Having not sat on this committee, and also this is probably the area that we deal with that I feel the least comfortable to comment on, I'm not going to get down into the details of this document. But I do appreciate that those that are more knowledgeable than myself sit on that committee and are doing this really, really important work. When I sat on the other side of the House, it's one of the most important things I've heard from anybody who's Indigenous, is implementing this.

So I guess what I just want to comment on is around before I ever ran, I often heard about the detriment of the unsettled land claims to do with our exploration sector and our inability to really sort of prosper and get at some of our mineral resources. However, one thing that's really been highlighted to me in the last couple months is around the recent flooding and our climate change adaptation and how the land claims not being settled is actually prohibiting us from adapting properly to the flooding that is occurring.

For example, in Jean Marie River, you can't move houses out of the floodplain, which is the band's land into the -- and I'm probably not going to say this all totally right, but onto the GNWT land surrounding the area because it's not in a settled land claim and therefore it would have to be around -- done under a transfer, swap of land, versus being able to move homes out of the risk up and up into the area where it's safe, which is eventually going to be their land anyway, but has to go through this whole process to begin with.

So I guess why I raise this is that all I ever hear about this work or the land claims work is how slow it is, which has been acknowledged by everybody here. However, I think the crucialness is not only now around our economy, it's now also around our climate and our ability to keep our people safe during these changes.

A lot of these places need to be moved, and they need to be moved up out of floodplains. In British Columbia, you wouldn't be allowed to build in those floodplains anymore. You can't build in the riparian zone of a river or a stream or even a creek sometimes. So for us to be leaving our people in those situations solely because we can't figure out some way through all of this, I think is a neglect and a detriment and so I just -- I guess just want to say I really support empowering the Indigenous governments and organizations to do work for themselves.

When I was a Minister, that was one thing I always said when I went in to discuss infrastructure plans was what do you want for your community. And it often felt to me that the GNWT was a hindrance in moving forward. So the more we can empower Indigenous people, I think the better that our communities will be and the more our people will prosper. Thank you, Mr. Chair.