That's really good to hear.
I want to focus a little bit more on the housing issue because housing is probably the number one issue in my riding at every meeting. Regardless of what the focus is on in the discussion, housing will come to the surface. Fifty per cent of my population is indigenous, and a lot of what we have in terms of social issues can be attributed to the housing conditions. Studies have shown that if we could fix the housing problem, 50% of our social issues would go away. I was really glad to see what you had captured in your presentation the need for a national housing strategy. I think that's a good move. We're really trying to engage.
I find that we really have to do a lot more to try to focus on affordable housing. I think that's an issue right across Canada. We have many communities situated close to major projects. For us, the best program for aboriginal people is a good job, but we still have systems that are clogged because our public communities, our aboriginal communities, are designed for a social system and the social system doesn't work well for people who have jobs. For example, in one of the communities I just visited, which is almost all aboriginal, there are 200 people working at the mine and they're still all in social housing, and it's clogging up the system.
I'm hoping that we're going to try to find a mechanism in the national housing strategy that will work for us in the north and work for the aboriginal communities.
I'm curious at to why—and maybe it's because you don't have the members—you don't have an indigenous plank or focus, not a mention at all. I think there's going to be a need for a strategy for indigenous housing throughout all organizations that deal with aboriginal people, but including yours as a national organization.