Hon. Kim Pate: Thank you, minister, for being here and thank you for the work you have done since being in government, and also in the community before being in the government.

You spoke earlier about the importance of prevention. As you will well know, successive governments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees fighting Indigenous people and communities in court.

Minister, could you please share with us the kinds of processes that are considered, and, in fact, how social, human, environmental and fiscal costs are assessed in terms of deciding whether to fight international charter and human rights decisions in courts versus the manner in which resources might instead be used to provide preventative services and avoid the sorts of litigation and court decisions that you have already mentioned?

If you are not able to share that, would you commit to requesting, say, the Parliamentary Budget Officer or another arm’s-length body to do that kind of assessment?