Senator Brazeau: I absolutely agree. Of course, honourable senators now know that there are five organizations. What matters is making sure that the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, Mr. Miller, appears before the committee and clearly indicates why the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, one of the five national organizations recognized and funded by the federal government, was excluded. That’s all.

(On motion of Senator Martin, debate adjourned.)

[English]

Senator Brazeau: Thank you very much for the question. Absolutely, in terms of when we deal with urban and off-reserve Indigenous issues, we have the National Association of Friendship Centres, which provides direct services for the benefit of Indigenous people living off reserve. But the “political” organization has been and is currently the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples.

Like I said earlier, I am going to talk more in depth about this at a future time very soon.

There was a Supreme Court of Canada decision in 2016 called the Daniels case, which was named after a former leader of the Congress, Harry Daniels. Harry Daniels took the Government of Canada to the Supreme Court, basically saying that the Government of Canada had jurisdiction for all Aboriginal peoples in Canada because the practice of the federal government has been — regardless of political stripe or colour — that once a native person moves outside the reserve, they become a provincial responsibility. That is the position of the federal government.

I have never met any premier who has accepted this position in all my years of experience. What happens? Well, people fall in between the cracks.

However, the Supreme Court decision came to confirm that because the Government of Canada created so many different labels for Indigenous peoples — treaty, non-treaty, status, non-status, on-reserve, off-reserve, Inuit, Métis — the Supreme Court concluded in 2016 that the federal government has jurisdiction and is responsible for all Aboriginal peoples, Indigenous peoples. Their practice has been, for the most part, Indigenous people living on-reserve. That is why, even 20 years ago — I don’t know what the figures are today, but up until 10 years ago, for every $8 spent by the federal government on-reserve, they spent $1 off-reserve, yet the majority of the First Nation and Indigenous population in Canada reside off-reserve.

Here is a perfect example, in my view, of how the government of the day is trying to offload to provinces, and they are trying to do away with their responsibility. But we have a 2016 Supreme Court decision that confirms they are responsible. I don’t know if that is perhaps the reason why the Congress was omitted from being on the board of directors or perhaps it is because the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples — because of this very issue of exclusion — supported the Conservative Party of Canada in the 2006 election. Perhaps it is payback for the Congress having been politically involved at that time because they were being excluded by the Paul Martin government.

People will have their different opinions and viewpoints on Indigenous organizations, but like I say, this is an Indigenous organization that has been there since 1971. You know what? It is the organization that also brought about the Powley decision in terms of Métis harvesting rights.

There are a lot of good things to say about our organization, but it seems as if the government has been purposefully wanting to limit its transactions with this organization probably because of the Supreme Court decision. Time will tell.

[Translation]