Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member opposite for her impassioned speech and advocacy in this area.
I am on the indigenous committee. We are doing a study right now on suicide within indigenous communities and have heard first-hand about a lot of the issues and concerns, as well as the terrible stories, that exist in our indigenous communities.
If there is one thing I have learned, it is that we need to empower indigenous peoples to set the priorities that will benefit their communities. Our government has shown tremendous support for the empowerment of our indigenous communities to establish that nation-to-nation relationship, and to provide a level of funding that will help to address some of the issues.
We need to be able to give our indigenous communities the ability to self-determine where those funds should go and where the priorities should be. That is only going to occur through this nation-to-nation relationship. It does not happen overnight. It has taken us a couple of centuries to get to where we are today with this abysmal situation. We need time to develop the types of programs that will benefit indigenous communities.
Would the member opposite not agree with that?