Maybe I can start.
First all, if we didn't reflect first nations, Inuit and Métis as much as you would have liked, I'm sorry. I must say, though, that if you look at the period since 2016, you see many initiatives that never existed before that are distinction-based, which before were only “first nations”. For example, we developed a first nation, Inuit and Métis housing strategy that for the first time included 10 years of funding for the Inuit organizations, as well as the Métis one.
The last budget also included a post-secondary education or PSE strategy that included specific funding dedicated to the Inuit as well as the Métis. We never had one that way before.
On Jordan's principle, we're working now with the Inuit with the child first initiative in the north. We also try to make sure that as much as possible the kids are getting services. This year we're starting and have already addressed 5,000 cases through this strategy.
We are thus really first nation-, Inuit- and Métis-focused, much more than we were before. That said, there's been traditionally a role for the federal government—this answers a bit your questions about reserves—that has been focused on first nations communities or first nations reserves.
The reason is that under subsection 91(24) of the Constitution Act, 1867, the reserves are Indian land and are federal territory, basically. That's the way the lands that were provided to the first nations—or “Indians”, as it was written at the time.... It raised an issue of the fiduciary role and the responsibility that the federal government has.
There is also the fact that provinces, most of the time, don't fund infrastructure in those communities. Exceptionally they do, but most of the time they do not. The fed is directly there. That explains, or it's one of the reasons that a significant percentage of the budget would be dedicated to the first nations. It's not because we are not first nation-, Inuit- and Métis-focused per se. It's also because of this traditional, historic role that we have.
On the issue of the people in the department, as I mentioned before, 28% of my staff are indigenous. It's by far not enough. In terms of people in positions of authority, I don't know; I would need to find out. I need to also know exactly how I would define it. I can tell you, however, that we have among probably seven assistant deputy ministers three who are indigenous. At the director and DG level, we have some.
As I said before, however, it's actually more difficult at the executive level. I would be very frank with you: the most difficult issue is the language barrier. When you come to be in a position of managing people, the law says that you have to speak both official languages. This is an issue that we have. We're trying to make programs, as much as possible, for people to learn their French or English, but this is one of the challenges.