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If Canada’s typically low-key response to COVID-19 proves unfit for purpose, medical historians may wonder what on earth the Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee was doing meeting in Ottawa on Tuesday. Suddenly “the Indigenous crisis in Quebec and Canada” — the odd title the committee has given the nationwide foofaraw over Coastal GasLink’s pipeline project on Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia — doesn’t look quite as crisis-y as it did two weeks ago.

Nevertheless, Wet’suwet’en member Theresa Tait-Day’s compelling testimony on Tuesday was a welcome reminder of just how many loose ends remain to be tied, now that the trains are running again, and once we’ve dealt with this most novel coronavirus.

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For starters, we still don’t know the details of the arrangement, struck earlier this month between Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and federal and provincial government officials, that allowed for pipeline work to resume. Those details could well represent positive progress on establishing just what the Wet’suwet’en’s legal claim on their lands — affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1997 — really means. But did the government have any business negotiating with the chiefs in question in the first place?