Senator Tannas: To your first point, every province has a different scheme, and we did not spend a lot of time analyzing those schemes because we want to get the province out of the way. To the extent that the province takes, in some cases, 70% of the profit and returns a small amount of that, which they decide, to whoever they decide should get it and leaves 15% of the profit with the host community, there are all of these schemes that involve so many percentage points going in all directions. That’s not for us to decide.

In this case, we’re handing over jurisdiction, just like we did with the provinces. There were no conditions. The agreement that transferred this authority to the provinces is about three pages long, and two pages of it is signatures. It was not complicated and it wasn’t fraught with a whole bunch of conditions that the federal government said they wanted to have in the future.

I know it’s risky. I know our reflex is to say that we can’t trust them with this. Well, I’m sorry; we have to. We have to believe that Indigenous governments will get it right. That is the whole point.

On the second issue, which is sort of the same issue, we need to understand. I think the operators understand who their customers are and they have actioned the idea of an Indigenous gaming commission that they would all belong to. It was passed as a motion to begin to build a framework at AFN — Assembly of First Nations — just a few months ago. They are doing the work to put that in place.

They also have the example of the United States. When the rights and jurisdiction were given over, there was some disruption and dislocation, and there needed to be a collective that brought good standards and the right policies together. But again, that is for those nations to decide. This is business that is being conducted on their lands.

We could spend months or years dreaming up all the rules, regulations, conditions and so on that we’d like to place on the First Nations in order for them to take up a right that they assert is already theirs. That’s not what we should do. It’s not what was done with the provinces. We trusted the provinces to come up with the right rules, regulations, schemes, wealth transfers and so on. We need to do the same with Indigenous governments if we believe this.