Hon. Mary Jane McCallum: The amendment that I had made to Bill C-218 — which brought about the inherent right of gambling that First Nations have — was voted against in the Senate, and the amendment didn’t pass.

What makes this different from that amendment? Also, does this include virtual gaming? As you know, with Bill C-218, First Nations across the country cannot enter into virtual gaming and are literally left out. The Mohawks, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs and the other chiefs from Ontario — I was bringing this on their behalf — are looking at correcting this. Could you answer those questions?

Senator Tannas: Those are all good questions. With respect to the amendment that you brought forward, I think I voted against it. I felt that it was a consequential amendment that was outside the scope of that bill, and that it needed to be its own bill. We have it here now, and I think we can engage on the discussion of the other items.

With respect to virtual gaming, the initial issue is to put First Nations governments in exactly the same position as the provinces. It’s not clear in any laws in the country — that I can see — where the rules are with respect to virtual gaming. Ontario and others have said, “Virtual gaming means you have to live in our province,” but that’s their interpretation of it. There isn’t any clarity.

As a step, we wanted to make sure that First Nations have the ability to pursue gaming on their reserves in law and in the Criminal Code. The one piece that we did make sure our language included was the fact that they can run virtual gaming servers on-reserve — that would be included.

The question of how their jurisdiction — as an elected First Nations government on-reserve — interacts with Province X or Province Y, or Country X or Country Y, is something that they will have to sort out and negotiate, but they will be negotiating in the context of all the other countries and provinces that are trying to understand how this works.