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.

Hon. Brent Cotter: Senator Tannas, I have two or three questions. As you know, I’m not in opposition to the matter being considered in a timely way, and I want to state that publicly and on the record.

I would invite you to offer your thoughts on this dimension of it. In the lawsuit that was brought against the federal government, the judge found that large exemption in relation to federal taxes had been — which was also to run for a very long time — taken away by federal legislation over the years. Are you offended by that happening in the way in which you’ve just described this seeming to be unfair to a corporation that made a contract a long time ago? I guess I’m saying that the Government of Canada made the same contract with respect to itself but then took away CP’s rights over the decades.

I have another question after this, but I would be interested in your thoughts.

Hon. Brent Cotter: Will Senator Tannas take one more question?

Senator Cotter: I really enjoyed the remarks, Senator Plett. I thought they were thoughtful, deep and meaningful and heartfelt. My question is a technical one, and I think it’s an important one. It’s the dialogue that Senator Tannas and I had earlier about what is the time at which we are making this decision.

I’m a lawyer. Sometimes it’s an advantage; sometimes it’s a curse. I don’t want to pose this as some kind of a legal trap, but I want to describe what I think the meaning and intention of the legislation are and invite you to comment. I won’t ask a follow‑up.

The government issues the declaration. They are required then to table the declaration. They are required to table their justification for it — the report, the information about their consultations, and all of that — in relation to the declaration they issued. That comes to us. One would have thought, in the normal course, that that’s what we’re deciding on — whether the case that they made and presented to us was good enough.

The reason that seems to make sense to me — I think maybe Senator Tannas and I disagree — is when you turn the page then, there’s another option, which is, for a group of us, if we think it’s the right course, to initiate a process to revoke an already existing declaration.

That seems to me then to invite us to focus our attention on a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to the government issuing the declaration and the case it presented to us for justification, so not so much today but presumably last Tuesday or Wednesday or whenever the day is that we should focus on. I won’t ask a follow-up. I’d really appreciate your view about whether that was what the legislation really intended for us to do.