Canadian Heritage committee  I have nothing to add at this time.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for the question. It's difficult to say at this time, as we're still listening to indigenous voices as they go through this recent tragedy. As I mentioned, it's the role of government to facilitate the access to the resources, but when requested, when people are ready.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much. I'll try this with the video on, but I'll turn it off if I'm signalled that people can't hear me clearly. The $27.1 million was announced in order to support the implementation of calls to action 74 to 76. It is accessible to indigenous organizations, communities and survivor organizations.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for the question. We invited over 200 organizations, and approximately 150 participated in a national virtual engagement last summer and fall, in 2020. We wanted to hear from [Technical difficulty—Editor] on the best way to proceed. With the COVID pandemic, we suffered some delays in giving communities the time and the space to take the preparations they needed within their communities to address the pandemic.

Canadian Heritage committee  Could you please repeat the question?

Canadian Heritage committee  You have my apologies. I was disconnected for a couple of minutes. I'm not sure I heard everything that was presented, but I did catch the fact that you were interested in hearing what the $27.1 million was for. Am I correct in that?

Canadian Heritage committee  The $27.1 million is the funding that's now available from the $33.8 million specifically targeted for calls to action 74 to 76. The funding is dedicated to supporting indigenous communities and survivors' organizations and their partners in locating, documenting, maintaining and commemorating burial sites associated with former residential schools, and responding to family wishes to commemorate and memorialize their losses and the children's final resting places.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you very much for inviting me here. At this moment, I can say that we've received over 17 requests for more information about the funding envelope. We've provided them with the necessary information for them to access the funding. At this point we've not received more than 10 proposals, as communities work through this very difficult tragedy and listen to their communities and their survivors about the best approach to move forward.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for that. We engaged with over 150 participants during summer and fall 2020, and we overwhelming heard that the approach that Canada should take should be to facilitate access to resources, but the project should be community-led and informed by survivors. We're currently reaching out with colleagues and other professionals to start the conversation about how to provide a sense of guidance on ground-penetrating radar that communities can access to enable them to make informed decisions.

Canadian Heritage committee  We wanted to make sure we engaged with survivor organizations, indigenous leaders, health practitioners and archaeologists. We did that engagement over the summer and fall of last year. We had delays due to the pandemic. We supported the communities by identifying their priorities, and supported them and their members during that difficult time.