Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to thank everyone for coming today.
Over this process, I've learned a lot. I do have family who are first nations and everything else, but you really grasp how serious this is when you go from coast to coast to coast. We see young people moving to the cities, becoming more urban. They're losing the connection to their home community. Their language and the culture are slowly slipping away. I don't know what can be done to solve that, but I guess this is a great first step.
One thing that I've been told numerous times is we want a grassroots approach to this issue. We want individual communities to be able to have the flexibility to do what they need to do in a community. Not every community is the same.
My first question will go to Grand Chief Littlechild.
Do you believe it's important that there be grassroots established, so that we're not going to have some kind of a new bureaucracy handing out money with strings attached to it? Do you think it should be grassroots, with the ability to do what needs to be done to ensure that the next generation has the tools they need to bring back their culture and language?