Human Resources committee  It's resulting in a loss of life and it's preventable. It's just preventable. Indigenous women I know have solutions to fix that. If the governments could get out of the way and resource indigenous women, we wouldn't be sitting here today.

Human Resources committee  Thank you.

Human Resources committee  In the shelter we ran, there was a medical clinic, a daycare, a family centre and advocacy services. It operated just like a community, and communities don't leave people out and they don't marginalize people. It is an inclusive, wraparound service that moves people forward into productivity.

Human Resources committee  That amount didn't even touch it. People will die, and the government needs to act now. The complicating factor is that the funding is structured through a public government system that actually is not controlled by Inuit in community, so women and families are not going to survive in that structure.

Human Resources committee  To put it bluntly, it's ass-backwards. If you have been continually structured into poverty, how are you to have the resources to buy into that scheme?

Human Resources committee  It must, because the difference between the north and the south is that you actually have some indigenous governance system there. But in the public government system, there's a lot of facade or gaslighting to suggest that indigenous people have a voice in how that money is distributed and used.

Human Resources committee  They don't go. Even if they do manage to scrape through and go out of desperation, they don't stay. If they try to stay, they're very often kicked out, which brings us to the other issue. There is no protection for indigenous people in non-indigenous housing such as transition housing.

Human Resources committee  The first thing that needs to happen is to again hear that voice of lived experience from those young people, because there is a presumption that the system is their advocate. In fact, I've had it said to me and, really, I've watched it over four decades. There's nothing more destructive to a community than child welfare bodies, child welfare authorities, because they are literally incapable of understanding or taking a strength-based approach.

Human Resources committee  Thank you.

Human Resources committee  First, I would like to say that these spaces have to be run by indigenous people. We've had, for example, indigenous women who have had to talk into a box outside to get into a shelter and they haven't been allowed into the shelter because there was an assumption that they had been drinking.

Human Resources committee  I'll give you one example. Do you remember the Arnica Inn? It's an example in which the two departments, the federal government's and the territorial government's, were not talking. The women's group was ready to go ahead; the person who owned the hotel was ready to go ahead. These two governments couldn't talk and blamed each other, so the deal was off the table.

Human Resources committee  At the end of the day, housing in Yellowknife is not required. It has to go to the communities, but they wouldn't have the capacity to write the proposals. All of that money, $60 million, should not be located in Yellowknife, none of it.

Human Resources committee  May I answer?

Human Resources committee  At the end of the day, safe housing is everything in rural and remote communities. Who defines safe housing is the question. How you access safe housing is also the question. We find that women are often flown from remote communities or rural communities into cities and into regional centres, where they're also at risk.

Human Resources committee  Well, I think we have to start from where people are, not where we think they should be. Twenty years ago we did low-barrier housing because I experienced homelessness. My goal was to get women out of the cold. How they behaved and my expectations were secondary to that. Now, 30 years later, everybody is on a trend talking about low-barrier housing as if it were a new thing.