The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Much Progress Has Canada Made on Indigenous Relations?

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

Relations between Canada and Indigenous Peoples have certainly evolved since The Agenda first began covering these issues in 2006. There was Stephen Harper's historic apology to former students of Residential Schools in 2008. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that followed, led by the late Senator Murray Sinclair. The Idle No More movement of the early 2010s. And much more. As we mark National Indigenous History Month, we thought we'd look back at some of these flashpoints in our history, and find out how much progress has been made. From Kanesatake First Nation, council Chief Serge Simon; Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Chair on Truth and Reconciliation at Lakehead University; Karyn Pugliese, journalist and instructor at Carleton University; and Riley Yesno, PhD candidate in political science and Indigenous studies at the University of Toronto, join Steve Paikin to discuss.Chief Serge Simon; Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Chair on Truth and Reconciliation at Lakehead University; Karyn Pugliese, journalist and instructor at Carleton University; and Riley Yesno, PhD candidate in political science and Indigenous studies at the University of Toronto, join Steve Paikin to discuss.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Relations between Canada and Indigenous peoples have certainly evolved since the agenda first began covering these issues in 2006. There was Prime Minister Stephen Harper's historic apology to former students of residential schools. That was in 2008. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission followed, led by the late Senator Murray Sinclair. The Idle No More movement of the early 2010s. And of course so much more. As we mark National Indigenous History Month, we thought we'd look back at some of these flashpoints in our history and find out how much progress has been made.

And with that, we welcome on the line from Kana-Sitake First Nation in Quebec, Council Chief Serge Simon. In Orillia, Ontario, Cynthia Wesley Eskima, the Chair of Truth and Reconciliation at Lakehead University. And with us here in studio, Karen Pugliese, journalist and instructor at Carleton University. And Riley Yesno, PhD candidate in political science and indigenous studies at the University of Toronto. And it's great to see you two again here in our studio and to our friends in Points Beyond, thank you for making yourselves available for us

here on TVO tonight. Let's start our discussion talking reconciliation and we just want to show some numbers here. The Enveronics Institute did some surveying on whether people thought we will make meaningful progress towards reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous people. And for those listening on podcast, I'm going to sort of explain the charts a little bit here because we're throwing a whole ton of numbers your way.

Essentially this first chart shows progress towards reconciliation, indigenous peoples surveyed, and the numbers as the years increase seem to be somewhat more buoyant, somewhat more optimistic. And if we compare that to non-Indigenous people, the numbers are quite optimistic and have stayed fairly static over the last four years. And I guess I want to start by just finding out what you folks read into all of that.

Cynthia, get us started if you would. What do those numbers mean to you? Well, you know what? The numbers mean a certain kind of thing to me on the ground, and they mean another thing entirely when we look at the national picture right across Canada. Because what I'm finding with the work that I do is that there's a lot of people that are very close to the ground at churches, community centers, places like that that are very engaged with the conversation around truth and reconciliation. So that's what I'm seeing. So I see it as being pretty positive. Chief Simon, how do you see it?

Well, it's encouraging that you look at some of the numbers where it's increasing, but you also have a range between 11% and 16% of people who really don't have a clue. So it shows that there's a lot of work still to be done when it comes to the general population of Canada and its understanding of First Nation issues of why we are the way we are, who we used to be,

and how we struggle on trying to preserve what's left of our identities. So reconciliation is a huge work in progress. Understood, Karen. I think the biggest change that I've seen is amongst Indigenous youth. I mean, when you think about it or when I think about reconciliation, I've often thought that it's not necessarily something that other people are going to do. It's something that First Nations people, Inuit people, Metis people are going to do for ourselves. And there's been a big change in how confident we are

about the world and also just in how our children are growing up with a foot in Western education and a much stronger connection to their culture. A lot of times when I was growing up, I really had to be shown how to do things, how to do ceremony. And kids now, they just know how to do it. And so when I think about reconciliation coming, I think of it really growing from that young generation.

Riley. Yeah, I'm echoing a little bit of what Karen's saying there, in that I found the stat surprising. And I wonder if you broke it down by age demographic or any other sort of aggregates that it would be different. One of the things I also am a bit skeptical of is this sort of, I guess I'll call it a visibility bias. And that I'm skeptical in terms of the work that we've actually

done of reconciliation has been what it should be and where we should be at. But I do think that reconciliation is a bigger conversation now than it certainly was five, ten years ago. That we have land acknowledgments and apologies and orange shirt days. And so that can very easily, I think, give the impression that a lot of work is being done. And maybe it's a conversational shift, but I'm still not sure about the actual material changes that the TRC articulates, for example. Okay, let me follow up with Cynthia in that regard,

which is I know it's heretical to say anything nice about Justin Trudeau in this country these days, but I think the fact is that he put indigenous relations and reconciliation on the national agenda in a way that none of his predecessors ever did. And is it possible these numbers reflect those efforts? Well, I would say probably. Again, there's so many different things going on.

Everybody's right. There's stuff going on at so many different levels with this conversation. The truth is still very much a part of the survivor's conversation. I have those kinds of conversations at the National Center on a regular basis. But I think that Trudeau handing that over to Carney, I think there's some movement there. But again, I always tell people it's not the government's total sole responsibility to make truth and reconciliation happen. They definitely have to play a role. But it's the churches, it's law, there are 18 calls to action for law that I don't see a lot of movement on. There's education, there's child welfare, there's a lot going on.

And I think that the responsibility for that is not clear to the Canadian population. They keep thinking it's the government supposed to do everything. And I keep telling people, no, it's everybody that's supposed to be doing something. And that includes people that say that they are not aware of what's happening. Having said that, Riley, do you believe the creation and the recommendations put forward by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has played a significant role in people

thinking something constructive is happening right now? I think so. I mean, when I look at, for example, the Yellowhead Institute's analysis of the calls to action and how much progress has been made on them, I believe it's 13 as of their last counting that have been done, which is a very small number of the 94, obviously. And at that rate of completion, I don't think that they're supposed to be done until 2080. And so to me, that's a failure of action.

But also, when you take a more qualitative look at which ones have been completed, there are these ones that fall under the legacy reconciliation category, so things like a national holiday, things like the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry, not bad things, but things which, unless further acted upon, don't change the day-to-day living conditions of Indigenous people.

But they do certainly give the impression that a lot is happening when we see it in our news feeds and online and all of that. So I definitely think that there's a tie there, like you're mentioning. Chief, what do you think about the issue of the TRC leading to a more optimistic sense in the land that something's happening?

Well, considering where I sit, Ganesh Adagya is the site of the 1990 Oprah crisis. I remember that morning, I was up in the pines when the shooting started, and I swear I could still hear the crackling of those bullets passing by me. Now, from there to where we are now, yeah, there's significant progress for sure. And I think we've learned from those mistakes that when we stop listening to each other, when we start looking at things, I guess, in a more beneficial way, you know, as self-interest

for both sides, I think we can make progress. So I don't know, the 35th anniversary of the Oka crisis is coming up and every year my stomach cringes, not knowing what to expect here locally. And, but I think things have evolved to a point where we use 1990 as a lesson of how do we avoid this? I think things have evolved to a point where we use 1990 as a lesson of how do we avoid this? And yeah, Justin Trudeau has made significant progress when it comes to indigenous relations, but everybody seems to forget that he's a prime minister.

He's subject to economic stresses. There's industry, international law, a lot of things come into play that make it difficult for a prime minister to unilaterally change things the way he wished things were. But despite that, First Nations economically, socially are making progress. There's always going to be some of us that are struggling, yes. But as long as we have a partner that's willing to listen. Right now the federal government is tossing a lot of its responsibilities over to the provincial and when you look at here in Quebec, the provincial government here, this province

is almost $360 billion in debt. It makes it a little difficult for them to, you know, to allot funding to First Nations for whatever reason. And oftentimes the federal government kind of pushes its responsibility aside, like for security, where I'm from, we have absolutely no security and we have a huge criminal problem in our community. Well, let me jump in there, Chief Simon, if I could, we have a huge criminal problem in our community.

Well, let me jump in there, Chief Simon, if I could, because we did some listening on this program 14 years ago when we had the pleasure of having the good Senator, Murray Sinclair, on our program. And we talked about all of these issues. So let's play a clip from that discussion 14 years ago. Sheldon, if you would. The one thing we remind members of the public about is while they were teaching

Aboriginal students in these schools that their cultures were inferior, their languages were inferior, and their historical existence was irrelevant. They were teaching the very same thing to non-Aboriginal children in a public school system. And so Canada has raised population upon population of people, generations now, of people have been raised with this particular attitude and information about Aboriginal people which is just wrong. And what we need to understand is it's the education system that got us into this situation where this relationship is so bad. And it's going to be the educational system that's going to get us out of it.

We're going to have to look at ways of ensuring that children who are educated in the future, Aboriginal children and non-Aboriginal children, are educated fully, properly, and adequately about the residential schools and their impact on our society. Karen, is that happening now? Yes and no. I mean it depends very much on the school and there's the older generation, like I remember Senator Murray Sinclair, when he was a senator, saying that he found it frustrating to be working with people who had never recognized indigenous governments as real governments

and had never really recognized indigenous rights as real rights. So on one hand, I think universities, depending on the university, are making headways to teach more. High schools are making headway to teach more. And we're probably going to see an intergenerational difference. But I just want to go back to the conversation we were having a little bit about Justin Trudeau. I think we're all going to see how much he was actually driving reconciliation,

however imperfectly he was doing it. Because while he was making great progress in some areas, he was still fighting compensation for child welfare and some other things that was very schizophrenic, didn't seem to make sense. But now we've got a new Liberal government in who's had a series of meetings with premiers and not invited Indigenous governments to the table to discuss things that are going to be happening like resource extraction on their land. So the liberals give it and the liberals take it away. What can I say? I'm going to come back to both Bill 5s. It's interesting the number five shows up federally and provincially in all of that but okay I mean Cynthia obviously

you've you've spent a lot of your life in the educational sphere. Following up on Murray Sinclair's comments do you think we are better placed today for most people to have a better understanding of the educational history of this country? I think we are, not only because of that, but also the work that I do with the Banff Centre. I have people coming from all across Canada, they want to know. We have Indigenous people showing up, they want to know more about it. And we're delivering public education hugely across from the National Centre on Truth and Reconciliation.

We hit at least 3 million people a year that we're actually updating and upgrading. These are kids in grades 6, 7 and 8. The university has done their job of putting those 13 principals in. We're doing our level best to try to reach as many people as we possibly can. Are we doing the best job? Probably not, but I think every university across Canada now has an Indigenous Centre of some kind. They're recognizing that this is an important conversation and they're doing whatever they can to ensure that their students get the kind of education that they need. Riley, where'd you go to high school? I went to high school in Thunder Bay, St. Pat's. St. Pat's and Thunder Bay.

How much did you learn about indigenous history, education, et cetera, in that school? I mean, not much, which is wild because I didn't go to high school that long ago. And also because Thunder Bay is a place that has a really high indigenous population. And so you'd think that if there was gonna be a school or a city that was doing more work

at that time, that it might have been Thunder Bay. That said, I've been really surprised by how quickly things shift and change. My brother is five years younger than me, six years younger than me, and when he was in school, then suddenly the curriculum had vastly changed, and he had land acknowledgements and was learning about the Indian Act and learning about all of these things.

Whereas for me, it was the experience that I hear actually a lot from older people, which is like, you learn mostly about World War I and II, you open the textbook and you get one chapter on Indigenous people and then close it. And that was kind of the extent of what I had received. But where changes have been made, I've been really impressed by how quickly and how ferociously they've kind of gone into that. All right, let me come back to the fives. We're talking Bill C-5 coming out of Parliament

and Bill 5 coming out of Queens Park because the observation has been made already that first ministers in this country have been having significant consultations about how to move so-called nation-building projects forward and there have been significant omissions at that table. And I guess, okay Chief Simon, let's start with you. I wonder if you see the potential for a movement like Idle No More to come back if indigenous people are not adequately

consulted while both levels of government pursue these so-called nation-building exercises? Well I don't know more as it's just one part. I remember between 2014 and 2018 we were fighting Energy East, we were fighting Trans Mountain, Line 9 going through Manitoba and what came out of that was the Treaty Alliance against the expansion of the tar sands. At one point, exhaustion kind of took over and I kind of fell back on it and let other people take over. And this is one of the things that I hope people learn that when we combine our powers together, we can make significant changes to protect the environment.

So right now I'm not sure where the treaty alliance is, who's taking it over, but I hope we can rekindle that and remind the governments and the international monetary fund and the oil industry that we have a say. It's our land. And you look at the state of the planet and where it's going, I that we have a say. It's our land. And you look at the state of the planet and where it's going, I think we have even more of a responsibility today to take that kind of action, combine our powers, whether it's through a treaty or some formal agreement

between First Nations, we can force progress. Well, in fact, Karen, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that indigenous communities have a say not a veto but a say there is the duty to consult what are you seeing on that front these days? Well I mean that's the key case that's come out has been from Eagle Village in Quebec where they were fighting a nuclear power plant that some people might be aware of in Ontario that was going to be along Chalk River. And the courts went back to them and still didn't say veto.

And actually, veto is becoming a dirty word because it indicates that indigenous people are maybe against development. But I will say veto because I just think it's the clearest word that we can use. But they said that definitely the Canada's adoption of Uyndrā into law under the Uyndrā Act, that's the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, a lot of mouthful, does obligate people to consider indigenous laws. So it's interesting in other countries what indigenous groups have done is they just said, you know what, we're going to come up with our own laws. And we are going to push on free prior informed consent and the right to withhold consent.

If you do not have the right to withhold consent, then basically what happens is things are the way they are. The government asks First Nations people, do you have concern? And they say we have these concerns. They say, well, we'll accommodate that. And now development can go ahead whether you like it or not. And that's a problem. Twelve and a half years ago, we talked about that on this program

with the very same Cynthia Wesley Eskima, who is here today. Sheldon, roll the clip. Those communities were absolutely functioning communities for thousands of years before the federal government interfered in their livelihoods and in the way where they live. The Adiwapiskite community is sitting on a flood plain not because they wanted to be there but because they were forced to be there by a government who wanted to be able to have access to them. In the 50s many communities across the North were moved out of their traditional territories

and put into towns and put into places where their land was poor and there was no resources for them to work with. And now we're coming back saying, oh gee, you know, these people can't live where they are. If people understood the history of this country better, they would understand that we created that in the South. And I say we simply because I live in the South. But we created that as a Canadian state. They did not create that themselves. Cynthia, do you think people, generally speaking, across the country have a better sense about what you and others were fighting for a decade and a half ago? Well, I'm certainly doing my best to inform them about those facts.

I keep telling them on a regular basis. You know, it is us here that have put people in settlements and taken them off the land. We're the ones that have quantified their food sources. We're the ones that have polluted their waters. So we have a better life in the South. We have every right to stand up against these bills. And they're just not listening when it comes to that. Development seems to be the way everybody thinks that we should go. And I'm telling you, we're killing the planet and we're killing a lot of people for just for, you know, I think somebody said a long time ago, you can't eat money. We have to fight against it. Our young people are getting ready.

They're more informed. They're more, you know, that two-eyed seeing they're more, they know the Western world, they know their own world. They know their own world. They know their ceremonies. They're getting ready. We have to support them. And we have to guide this conversation because we have a right to be at those tables. Riley, what about it?

Do you think people have a better understanding? I'm talking non-Indigenous people now. Do they have a better understanding of why blockades happen, why hunger strikes happen, why protests happen? What do you think? Oh, man. I don't know. I feel like maybe to steal Karen's answer from earlier, yes and no. Like for example, would I say today most Canadians know about treaties? Sure.

Could I tell, would I think that they could tell me any bit of the content about them, what their treaty obligations are, you know, when they were signed, what that all means? No. So I mean, maybe there's a general awareness that has grown, but I think a true meaningful understanding that transforms the way they think and walk through this country is still yet to be seen by a massive part of the population. And so that's the type of education work that I think the Senator was talking about there,

is not just you need to know what happened you need to have an awareness what happened but you have to be willing to also let that change you I think is the unspoken part of that and I'm still waiting to see that really embraced I think in full. Well let's see if that's reflected in some numbers here because we're going to talk about land now and we're going to show some more polling numbers this was done by Leger Marketing for the Association for Canadian Studies, and it was reported in the National Post. And they asked a very simple question.

I live on stolen indigenous lands. Yes or no? That's the question. 27% of those surveyed said yes. 52% said no. The rest did not know. But when you break it down by age you find some very interesting findings here. Those who responded, yes I live on indigenous, on

stolen indigenous land, the younger you are you are more likely to believe that. Ages 18 to 24, 41% believed it. And then as you get older, going all the way down to 65 plus, only 15% believe it. Karen, what's the significance of that? I think I really liked that survey for showing the age breakdown, because I think it shows a political awareness. And I think it shows that education and universities are doing the work that the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission asked them to do. The one thing that I had with the survey that I thought might be a little bit of a worrying problem was about the stolen Indigenous land because there's definitely stolen Indigenous land in Quebec, in BC, but in other places there were agreements by treaty. So somebody saying no in certain provinces might actually be able to acknowledge that they're on treaty land, but it's not quite the same as being stolen. There's no nuance in that question. There's no nuance in that question. But back to the point about age, I thought that was

very interesting and very comforting, positive. Chief Simon, the land back movement is something that started in 2018, maybe even a little bit earlier actually. Do you think it's working to have the desired effect that so many in your world want? The lands back movement has been around for about 275 years. Well, fair point.

It's not something new. When you're looking at those like my nation has treaties with the British crown. Now from the territory we were promised to be left alone in, 260 square miles from Genizat Dage, we only have like maybe 2 or 3% left of it that we're actually occupying. The rest has been literally stolen. And what we see here, I guess we can interpret that as the word of the crown isn't worth the paper it's written on. Our treaties were very clear.

1760, the Royal proclamation of 1763, 1764 Treaty of Niagara, 1812. I mean, we could go on and on and on. And we're not talking about the treaties in the United States that still have meaning, and I think legal meaning, on our communities here in the Canadian side. So it's nice to see that the truth and reconciliation is having an impact on the education system and clearing

up the old racist ideals of this land is ours by right of might. And that slowly being washed away. But what do we do? Once this is cleared, how do we work with the non-Indigenous people living on these stolen lands? And how do we make it economically beneficial for both sides? They're not going anywhere. We're not going anywhere. The Crown can't wash its hands of this whole matter. So we really got to sit down and start talking about changing the policies of Canada.

The Supreme Court keeps telling the Canadian government, you have to do this, you have to do that. And the government, and I've said this to the minister before, your policy does not trump the Supreme Court decision on how you should act with our people when it comes to treaty rights. Cynthia, your reaction to those numbers. Well, of course I'm delighted, but I can also say that because I've been working in the university system for the last too long, that of course that

has to be happening because we do have young people that now know so much more than they ever did before and some of that is mandatory. We have residential school knowledge mandatory across the north. they take it from K up. So they're being raised with the understanding that these lands have treaties and maybe they don't necessarily know exactly what those treaties are about, but they do understand that those treaties have meaning. They do understand. And if you look at a map of Canada today and you see Nunavut and you see the Cree

and you see what's happening in BC and you see those tables that have been set and actually completed, you see a change across the entire country. So there is kind of land back. It's just that in the South, we're so populated by other people that that's not going to be as easy to do as it is in the North where it's mostly indigenous. So we, but we have to keep that in mind because I think it's important and we have to keep pushing. Let me put a new issue on the table. It was almost a decade ago that the

National Inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls started holding hearings and we got a report released in 2019 with some recommendations on that. Riley, how far have we come on that issue? I think similarly to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that it did a lot to maybe raise awareness of the issue. But when it comes to the parties that were assigned the calls for justice and how many of those they completed, I think that we're maybe

looking at eight of those by my last counting. So not a lot of substantial action on that front. But where we might be missing some sort of top-down leadership, I do think that there are a number of grassroots initiatives that have been taking place that I'm really heartened by. Yes, it's piecemeal. Yes, it's left up to the prerogatives and the resources

held by individuals and their institutions. But things like the Moose Hide campaign has done incredible work and done work that has been led by Indigenous voices, that we've been talking about the cases of murdered Indigenous women and girls more than I think we had in decades previous. And so bottom-up change, I see a lot of hope on, even if the top-down isn't looking as promising

as it should have been. Karen, your view? I think I like what you said about grassroots movements. I think that's where things are happening and staying happening. I did a sweep of media and the kind of coverage that Missing and Murdered Indigenous women were getting right up until the 2019 inquiry and it was getting higher and higher and right after it dropped down again. So I think it's out of the like the bigger public sphere and I also think that Indigenous women don't feel safer and that's the real test.

Are there more places for Indigenous women in remote communities to go if they're experienced violence? And the answer is no. Do I feel less likely that I am going to disappear? Do I feel less likely or more likely that the police would go searching for me? Absolutely not. The fact that I'm actually on air is the one thing that I think that if I went missing, would force the police to actually look for me. Cynthia, your view on whether we have any more trust

for national policing institutions in this country in indigenous communities? No. No, I agree with them. I think the grassroots piece is very positive. In the north, they put on those buses right after the inquiry was running, right after. And then they took them off, you know, so that people in the North could travel down to those down towards Vancouver, they took them off.

There's no conversation happening about this that I think is significant and I think we have to bring it back to the table on a regular basis and it's like anything that is a little bit squirmish for people then that gets buried. Whether it's the missing children, you know, whether it's the residential schools and the horrors that happen there, and whether it's missing and murdered Indigenous women, it's like, well, we don't really want to talk about that. You know, we'll talk about history, you know, we'll talk about the United Nations Declaration, we'll talk about things that we can sort of relate to, but we don't want to talk about those things. And I think we really need to put that back on the table and ensure that women feel safe.

I've got four daughters and I really would like them to be safe and I'd like my grandchildren to be safe. Right on. With five minutes to go, I want to come back to the fives and that is the federal bill five, C5 and the provincial bill five. And I want to make sure chief Simon, I'll get you in on this first.

I want to make sure that everybody understands where there is support and where there is not. Because I have had it explained to me, and Chief Simon, you can tell me if this is fair, I have had it explained to me that much of the opposition to a lack of consultation or a desire for partnership on nation-building projects comes from First Nations which are actually not in the area of the areas intended for the projects. That much of the opposition is from elsewhere and that many of the First Nations who are actually on the land that is intended to be built on are actually looking for partnerships and are more positive about these potential so-called nation-building projects. True or false, in your view? No, I think it's relatively false. There's so much that needs to be discussed.

It's not a matter of, like, it's a national building to build their nation, but in the end, when you're looking at some of these projects, it they're trying to do is make it easier to pass these, let's say these pipelines through one province to another. What happens to treaty rights in C5? What happens to First Nations incorporation structures? Can you see the difference between the two? province to another. What happens to treaty rights in C5? What happens to First Nations incorporation structures? Can we actually fight these projects? Because consultation is a dirty word.

I mean, like it was mentioned a while ago, they'll consult you on the project. And in the end, well, you have a say whether they take that say and actually make a change according to that. That's another matter but Well, let me put this to Riley then let me let me say if if First Nations were made partners in these projects if there Were guarantees for X number of jobs for First Nations people? Would that help I? I think it would help but but I don't think that... To the earlier statement, I don't think it's true.

As somebody who comes from also the Ring of Fire communities, my community is one of the very ones at the heart of what they're trying to do in Ontario in developing and mining. I think that it's ignorant of the fact that there's always been this opposition there and a lot of those communities in the Ring of Fire and elsewhere, to Karen's point earlier, do say that they are not necessarily anti-development communities, that they want these partnerships, that they do want jobs, that they understand that there needs to be some economic growth up there, but not at any cost, not at the cost of the environment, not at the cost of never being able to actually say no.

It's funny the way that it feels like, yes, veto is a dirty word for us, but Canada has no problem vetoing our nos. They get to do that whenever they want, right? And so I think that I'm really proud of the way that these communities in these regions have held out, even if they do want the money, even if they do want the project to say, we're not going to do it on any terms and not on your terms. If we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it in a way of like true genuine partnership

that I don't think has yet to be seen and certainly isn't being helped by the passing of these bills under a lot of protests, which certainly isn't being helped by a lot of the rhetoric coming out of Queens Park right now. And so I think they're actually getting farther away from that ideal rather than closer. We got about a minute to go here. Karen, let me give you 30 and then Cynthia can take the last 30 and talk about how we get to, or whether we can get to, yes, for

both sides on this issue. Yeah, there needs to be consultation. First Nations may want to hold out for better circumstances environmentally. They may want to hold out for... they may have their own ideas to develop ecotourism or something that is different from resource extraction. And so there needs to be consultation or it all falls apart. And just the point that you mentioned earlier, we don't know where a lot of these national projects are going to take place. And so it's false to say that, you know, First Nations are mostly in agreement because nobody knows where they're going, especially with C5, the federal bill.

Gotcha. Cynthia, last word to you. Yeah, I agree. And one thing that's always been missing in these conversations is the fact that the First Nations, the Metis, whoever's actually at the table, or not at the table, I should say, are never given an opportunity to have a choice. And I think that they need to listen to what they have to say.

And all of those factors that just got mentioned are absolutely paramount. We cannot just run over people because of development and because of capitalism. We need to be encouraging the people themselves to be sitting at the table, to give their part on it, and ensure that we protect this planet. We have been delighted to welcome the four of you numerous times to our program so that you considered

our actual and virtual table on this show over the last many years. So my thanks to Council Chief Serge Simon from the Kanisatake First Nation, Cynthia, Wesley, Eskimoff from Lakehead University, Karen Pugliese, Carleton University, Riley Yesno. Riley, when are you getting your PhD finally? Oh God, that's the question, isn't it?

I hope this next year. I hope this year. We hope so too. We hope so too. Thanks to all four of you for your great contributions to our program over these many years.