Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the presenters today. It was a very good presentation.
I certainly appreciate the work you're doing in the area of youth and the under-represented groups, especially the indigenous populations.
I heard many good things here today, and I think there's a real need to really focus on probably our fastest-growing population in the country, the indigenous people, who have high rates of unemployment. We have large pockets across Canada of unemployed indigenous people. It's estimated that we have well over 150,000 people sitting in aboriginal communities in the west, including the north, who are unemployed.
There are many challenges, of course, including education levels, addictions, and mobility—things you would think of as simple. Receiving a pardon for a criminal record is something that's been raised. We certainly have to rethink and modernize our tool kit, as was mentioned earlier today. We need to focus on healthy people and healthy communities, and that means jobs. That means education for aboriginal people, training, and opportunity. That's for all populations in all parts of Canada.
I'm really encouraged by what you're doing here in terms of developing a long-term strategy. My first question is to try to get a feel for how much involvement and collaboration you're getting from the aboriginal people across Canada, the indigenous people. Are they participating? Are you getting good feedback? How is that going?