Yes. I can tell you the money spent with Indspire meets the objectives. The question you ask is one more for the “deliverology” gurus, I would think.
I can tell you this also, Mr. Easter. When RCAP did their report in the 1980s, they came up with 400 recommendations. People asked how much it would cost, and the answer was $20 billion. Then there was a report done by RBC, I think, the bank, by Charlie Coffey. It was called “The Cost of Doing Nothing”. He quite rightly said that it's money, serious money, but what money will it cost to do nothing? Sadly, that is exactly what Canadians did at the time—not much—and here we are. It sounds like a great deal of money.
Let me tell you that the real question is how much are we spending to keep the unhealthy, dysfunctional relationship going now with indigenous peoples? It's many, many, many billions. Also, what are we losing in productivity in Canada's GDP by excluding so many indigenous people from the workforce? I think those numbers far outweigh the $8 billion, the $2 billion, the numbers that you've cited.
I think it's a worthy investment. It's an investment Canadians are making now. But at the other end of the spectrum, I ask us to flip the telescope around to invest in positive change, and that will pay for itself.
I don't want to give your clerk more work, but I suggest that you might ask your clerk to dig out the very recent Drummond-Sharpe report from the Centre for the Study of Living Standards. They make a very compelling case for the $36 billion-plus that would be added to Canada's GDP if we closed the gap in education and employment for indigenous people. That's a very big number.