Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Committee has recently been travelling on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People legislation, and we've been getting a lot of feedback, a lot of feedback that I think many people in this territory have heard for years. But I have a growing concern that this government is kind of blurring the lines of truth and adopting symbolic statements that perhaps they don't fully need.
In that legislation, for example, it says the GNWT rejects all form of colonialism. Certainly a lofty goal but we heard that the GNWT is a colonial government; it is not a valid government. We heard that not one single inch of Dene land should ever go to the GNWT. I don't think the GNWT believes those positions and certainly some people would give us feedback that that is colonialism. In fact, our own Aboriginal negotiation policy makes it quite clear that the GNWT's goal is to get a share of the land. We typically ask for about half of the subsurface and half of the surface land in this territory when negotiating agreements. We typically ask that the MVRMA apply and that ministerial responsibility apply. There are quite a few things that many people would say are modern colonialism that the GNWT is not willing to budge on, and an honest debate has to occur about those matters.
Similarly, in the UN Declaration, the GNWT says that Aboriginal rights are not frozen in time and they are capable of evolution and growth, but this government has long taken a position not to reopen existing land claims, that land claims have cede and surrender language in them, language that once that agreement is done it is done, those rights are not growing any further. Perhaps the government's position is shifting on this but if we're going to go out and properly implement UNDRIP, we need to be able to give answers to citizens when they ask these questions what are we doing, where is our position? We don't have those answers.
Yesterday in the House, I heard the Premier speak to a number of agreements. In our mandate, they committed to completing two agreements. Unfortunately, I heard the word “draft” in front of all those agreements. They're trying to stretch the definition of “complete.” None of those are public documents, none of them have been signed. We don't know what's in them. We don't know if we're actually making progress on this. I'll note we have a number of agreements-in-principle that are over 20 years old. I don't want to belittle the step of getting there, but it doesn't mean final. It doesn't mean done. And I'm concerned that we are simply not living up to this mandate commitment, and we're not being honest with our citizens about what we are willing to negotiate and what we are not leading to more broken promises, Mr. Speaker. I'll have questions for the Premier. Thank you.
