Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank both of you for being here today on this incredibly interesting and thought-provoking....
You've been getting some questions, and the committee has solicited your comments around things like the opening and closing ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympics.
I have to say that today being national housing day in this country.... We have a crisis up in Attawapiskat right now. We have 70,000 or more people in my city, Toronto, who are on affordable housing waiting lists.
Mr. Cyr, you referenced housing as one of a host of issues that affect urban first nations, Métis, and Inuit—indigenous peoples who are living in our urban centres. So if you were on this committee studying this, or if you were potentially named to an independent committee that was going to organize our 150th, I wonder how you would prioritize things.
Beautiful ceremonies are great, and they teach us about ourselves to a certain extent, but if we're talking about substantive legacy commitments, legacy issues, especially in terms of young people.... You know the median age in 1967 for Canada was 26; the median age for Canada now is 41. What you're saying about aboriginal youth in our cities is that they're at the median age that we were as a country 50 years ago. It's a staggering statistic, which I'm not convinced a focus on the ceremonial aspect of our culture is going to get at.
I'm wondering if you could both comment on what your priorities would be if you were on an independent body studying this issue and planning it.