Thanks to all of you for coming.
Mr. Dinsdale, this is a question for you.
Mr. Simms is lucky to have the Trans Canada Trail at the end of his backyard. Not too far from my backyard, there was a discovery of a village of the Wendat tribe, I'm told; it was a village circa 1500 to 1530. It's a pretty remarkable place. They say that about 2,000 people lived there. There were some 90 structures on the site and there was a palisade. We're still in the process of trying to find where the burial grounds were.
They're naming a school Wendat Public School, but one of the problems is that nobody in the town has any idea why they're naming a school Wendat Public School. Nobody in the town really has any concept of what was actually here and that it was a trading route back and forth to Lake Simcoe.
I don't like to talk about resetting a relationship, because you're always building on a relationship. I find that concept almost...I don't want to say insulting, but a lot of people worked very hard for a long time to help build a relationship—not always good sometimes, but sometimes good. I like to think we're always building on it.
One of the problems we have now and have had in the past is that for far too long in this country when there's a special event we'll ask first nations to participate, and then as soon as the event is over, we ask you to go away. I think the Olympics started to change that.
In a community like mine in Stouffville, I don't think any of the school kids have ever talked to somebody from the first nations. There has never been a visitor to the school, somebody from first nations, to talk about what was actually happening on that site. How do we, as part of the 150, help people...? My town is 40 kilometres north of Toronto. How do we get first nations out more into the...? I know that you focus on a lot of issues that are very important, but how can we provide funding to—and I don't know whether it's funding or what it is—get them into the schools, to get them out there to explain what's happening? We have a great little museum in Stouffville and it doesn't talk at all about first nations who were on the site.
How can we do that and maybe start helping people understand that it's not just the troubles they might see on the nightly news, but that there was an incredible history before that?