Let me give you an example that reflects our situation.
I'll speak in English because I work in an English environment right now with first nations.
Just to give you an example, the gaps we're facing in terms of mental health servicing and access are so impactful and tremendous that we don't even recognize them at times. I've been working in a first nations community for 25 years, and in the process of those 25 years I've witnessed 60 suicides in that community, three of them in the last four months. That doesn't make sense at all.
We tell people the rate of suicides in first nations is seven times greater than the national and provincial average. Why don't people understand the impact that's going to have on these communities? If we're going to talk about productivity and competitiveness—and I'm willing to play with that jargon as well—we have a demographic population in Canada to some degree that we could be utilizing to our economic advantage.
However, if we do not concentrate any effort or any resources in trying to build up those communities and those vulnerable populations. They're not just the first nations: immigrants and a lot of other people are at risk. We need to care about those people and we need to build that capacity in order to meet that need.