Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the department officials for being here with us today on this very important topic.
I have a couple of comments, in the sense that as a fifth-generation family in southern Alberta, I'm very familiar with Treaty 7 and the Blackfoot Confederacy. We grew up going to school with them, knowing residential schools. My mother actually taught in a residential school. This is something I'm familiar with.
I have met with many elders, some of those people I grew up with. I have met with clans, clan leaders, hereditary chiefs and elders who have survived residential schools. I've been to grave sites, marked and unmarked, in my riding. It's probably a history that some of us are very familiar with.
When we see the $33 million and only $27 million unspent, on that $27 million unspent, you sort of wonder, why is there confusion, is it a program that has been silent? I was on the heritage committee when we did the national day of recognition. There was a lot of discussion about that one. Some of the concerns I had about it were that it's federally regulated. It's not a statutory holiday for everybody. We have a problem with that one in itself, because it doesn't apply to everybody in our country.
When we talked about that day of recognition, my questions were often, “Are you putting this on their shoulders without any supports to indigenous people? Where is the connection to the rest of society, and whose onus is it going to be to carry this? Is it the school system? How are they going to do it?”
You mentioned the book. I mentioned that book should have been written and distributed everywhere in the country.
I think we have lots of problems here, in the sense of where we are going forward.
Our national [Technical difficulty—Editor] to indigenous people, the government hired...and I met with them. There was a play written about reconciliation, to do with Siksika and the first nations, by the Strathmore High School. It was viewed in a number of places. It's a phenomenal play. I said that's the kind of play that should be in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre, to bring things to people. They said they were given no money: “We were just hired, but we have no money."
I think we have a huge challenge here, in the sense of, one, confusion on who can get the money and how, and two, it's directed, I think, to indigenous people to carry the load on this, which is problematic. We're putting it back in the wrong place. We need to have a different way, because provinces do education.
Anyways, I have rambled. To the department officials, do you have any response to the concerns I have going forward on this?