Hon. Brent Cotter: Senator Tannas had begun to answer it. He answered me in private, but I think he might like to provide an answer to it here.

Hon. Brent Cotter: Senator Tannas, will you take a question or two?

Senator Tannas: Yes.

Senator Cotter: If I may, I have a jurisdiction question, Senator Tannas. The language in the preamble speaks to the inherent right of First Nations and the like, along the lines that Senator McCallum had raised earlier, but the bill is actually structured to be a delegation under the Criminal Code, so I’m curious about that.

Another dimension of this is that the structure of the bill says that when a First Nation gives notice to Canada that it intends to establish a gaming regime on its reserve, that First Nation, for the purposes of gaming, is deemed to no longer be part of the province in which it’s situated. It struck me as a unique provision that First Nations, for certain purposes, are deemed not to actually be part of the province anymore. I wonder if you could speak to those jurisdictional questions.

Senator Cotter: Thank you.

This is a fascinating initiative, Senator Tannas. It raises a variety of fascinating potentials and also some challenges.

I want to begin by channelling Senator Batters, if I might. In Saskatchewan, there are casinos on reserve — on roughly five reserves. Every dollar that is earned in those casinos goes back to First Nations communities now as is.

Second, that money is distributed, pro rata, to all the bands in the province, even the ones in the Far North that could never sustain a casino even if they wanted one; there would be no customers.

So empowering individual First Nations that are in attractive geographical locations to have the jurisdiction to operate their own casinos seems to be, quite frankly, a disruption of that fairly equitable arrangement in Saskatchewan. The band outside of Saskatoon — my good friend and yours, Darcy Bear, oversees a casino on the White Cap Dakota reserve, but the money that casino makes gets pooled in a province-wide arrangement. It seems to me that your proposal makes it possible that Chief Bear could carry on with his casino and keep all the profits, which would be great for White Cap Dakota — as it is for some First Nations around Phoenix, for example — but it is not so good for the rest of the province.

Could you comment on that?

Senator Tannas: Yes, and you’re right —