Thank you, senator. I’ll give you a partial answer. I don’t know what the status of the response to your report is. However, I’m happy to look into it.

I don’t know if I agree with the recommendation to transfer it to Crown-Indigenous Relations — not that I don’t think our team could do a good job at it, though. My reflection is one that is vested in thoughts about your rights and your people’s rights, which is one that had to be crystallized by going to the Supreme Court. You can ask yourself why, if it is a right, do you always have to go to the Supreme Court to enforce it? That’s immensely frustrating for most of your people who have a right to exercise a moderate livelihood as entrenched in both Marshall decisions.

My reflections on the efficiency and efficacy of the initiatives of the Government of Canada to respect those rights are ones where we need people to do their jobs and to look at things not necessarily in a commercial way or in a way that is based simply on a sole set of factors or based on the Fisheries Act, but ones based in the language of rights and respect of treaties. Whether we can do it or DFO can do it is less important to me than actually doing it right and working with that department in particular to make sure that those rights are respected. We’re not there yet and that is frustrating for most of the communities trying to exercise a moderate livelihood. That’s not to say that work hasn’t been done in the past 20 years that has been able to affirm a number of those rights, but we’re not there yet. I get how that’s frustrating. I welcome the report and I hope to contribute to the response as it comes up.