Thank you for that opportunity to comment on a continuing area of focus of our government. We believe that we need to be working to have a much better situation for indigenous people in this country. We know that through nation to nation dialogue we can improve the situation. We know that it can really only be fully improved if we put the funding required to make a difference over the long term. In thinking about the places where we've made funding, and thinking about education, and infrastructure—in the course of this year's budget it's the biggest single issue—and thinking about how we can make sure we can deliver health care to indigenous peoples on reserve, we know that all of these things are critically important to address if we really want to have a better situation for what, after all, is a critically important part of our country. It also is critically important that we have higher graduation rates of indigenous peoples and better workforce attachment by them, and we can only do it with the kind of investment that will have those outcomes as possibilities. That's what we're committed to doing. It's a long-term discussion, and we're going to remain focused on this area.
On April 10th, 2017. See this statement in context.