Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to make reference to how, after spending one meeting in the chair position, Madam Crowder had to fill the quota of partisan rhetoric that she missed from the last meeting. That's understandable. She took on the role in a non-partisan way, so she deserves some commendation for that.
In relation to one of her points concerning political accords, one good thing about this political accord that our minister signed was that it was actually an accord; it actually did have a signature page. I am very supportive of the action taken by that minister, and I know we are going to fulfill the obligations of that signed accord.
Moving on to the witnesses today, I want to pass along my appreciation for all of these witnesses, in light of the fact that the presentations made by all of you are very thoughtful and very interesting from the standpoint of how you approach the argument. I appreciate the logic you're using. I don't always agree with all the points being made; nonetheless, the sentiments that have been brought are sincere.
Perhaps I'll just start with one point, in relation to land. A number of times by a number of the witnesses, the issue of land has been brought up, and how this tribunal won't be able to deliver the awards with an actual land allotment—partly because, of course, as I think was already mentioned, much of the land is held by the provinces.
It's quite easy to see that it would put an unfair burden on this tribunal to attempt to get into a type of negotiation for land. Truly, a cash settlement allows for the first nation to go out and purchase that land, if available, and if not, then there are other opportunities. This is really the only way, in my opinion, that we could achieve this. I'd be interested to hear it, if there were perhaps a suggestion as to how it could be achieved in some other way. But in light of the lands being held by other parties, this is not something I see as feasible, so this would probably be the only approach.
In relation to the above-$150-million claims not being subject to this tribunal, I would like to also raise the point that pulling all those smaller claims out of the current system will give the Government of Canada the opportunity to focus its negotiations on the very large claims, which really represent less than 10% of all the specific claims out there.
My first directed question would be for Mr. Hunter, in relation to the number of judges. I think he made the point about raising that number to three. My question would be this. Because this would cause a very large change in the way judges are appointed and created in terms of their positions in Canada, I think it would slow down this process. Do you believe it would be worthwhile to slow down this process for the inclusion of more judges? Or do you think we should perhaps continue with the one judge?