Wow. It's like I'm taking a poison pill here.
First of all, I don't think you can ask first nations to lead. Initially, first nations need to be held accountable at the same level. Does the bar need to be raised? I think if you asked every Canadian...yes, the bar does need to be raised. We have auditors general, we have budget officers, we have all kinds of people who provide oversight to first nations governments, and we see all kinds of challenges that are being raised as a result of that oversight.
Having spent 20 years of my life in and out of Ottawa, and I've been here probably about two months a year since the early nineties, I've had the opportunity to observe our process, unlike most Canadians. I wish it could be less adversarial, because if it were less adversarial we might be able to get some things done.
If there's a problem here, it is that if anyone were to come forward and acknowledge that there needed to be improvements, I wouldn't want to be the government sitting in question period.
This is a matter that everyone has to embrace—saying we want to improve accountability. It can be, but it has to be done in the context of a cooperative effort among all parties in the parliamentary system. Then, as that bar gets raised, other orders of government should also be required to rise to that level. But you can't ask first nations to lead something other orders of government aren't leading, because we don't have the capacity or the resources to do it.