Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the presenters.
My question is for the FCM. As a former mayor and a former member of the Government of the Northwest Territories, I find that the issues you're bringing forward are issues that I worked on for many years. I recognize the huge deficit in our municipalities in terms of what we have for infrastructure, which is compounded even more in the north because a lot of those communities are aboriginal communities. They're public communities; they're not reserves, but they are aboriginal communities.
The issue of housing, I would say, is almost a crisis situation in the north, and the housing issue of course causes other issues. People have studied the results or the impacts, and they feel that if we could house everybody properly, we'd solve 50% of our social issues.
We have been seeing some good investments in the last couple of budgets. We are seeing some activity on our roads. Our municipal roads and some of the bridges are being fixed up. Also, we're looking at ways to try to adapt to some of the climate change effects that are challenging us.
I'm very happy that you're in front of us here today. We've had many people parade through these halls and the House of Commons in talking to ministers and the Prime Minister and raising the issue that funding for our part of the country, the north, can't be based on population. It can't be per capita. We've seen how that works, and it really doesn't give us enough to do anything. That argument has been there, and we've also heard a lot of arguments that in some of this funding we're going to see coming forward there has to be some flexibility to make it work for us.
I also agree with your argument that communities have to play a major role in project selection, so tell us, how could budget 2018 enable communities to play this role?