Yes, thank you.
I would like to direct my questions to Jocelyn—and maybe Steven, I'm not sure. Thank you so much for the briefs that all of you provided.
I'd like to first share with you that I am a very proud foster sister of Shaylene Lakey, who is Blackfoot from the Siksika Nation, so the urban indigenous issues that she's been putting out over the years are close to my heart. Shaylene is an amazing indigenous women whom I truly admire. She's built herself a successful career working with children in care. She's been advocating for indigenous youth, who consistently fall through the cracks.
This summer, we managed to catch up over lunch and she talked passionately about the serious inequity facing urban indigenous youth in particular. Following that lunch, I met with Joanne Mills, executive director of the Fraser Regional Aboriginal Friendship Centre. I can tell you that I left that meeting with incredible respect for Joanne, who has a deep love for the youth in her care.
I would just like to quote from an email she sent me recently:
I am the Executive Director of the Fraser Regional Aboriginal Friendship Centre Association in Surrey. I am Cree from Fisher River First Nation in Manitoba and consider myself a displaced urban indigenous woman. There are 8,000 kids in care for whom $333 million was spent last year. That's $41,250 per child. Over 50% of those children are indigenous. However, Surrey numbers show the shocking problem were facing. In Surrey, urban indigenous services only received $625 per person. We have the highest urban child poverty rate. We comprise 40% of the homeless population in spite of being less than 3% of the total population. We are 40% of the children in care. We are overrepresented in youth homeless data and corrections data. We are less likely to have a doctor or primary health care provider. We are less likely to graduate. We are overrepresented in the opioid mortality rates particular in Whalley, and our vulnerable youth are targets for human trafficking and homicide with Surrey being a hub. Only a fraction of dedicated funding is provided to indigenous agencies or service providers. The majority of funding goes to non-indigenous services or is delivered by non-indigenous agencies who do not understand the issues or remedies. Redirecting this funding to culturally appropriate service providers would demonstrate real commitment to breaking these cycles.
Would Ms. Formsma like to speak further to the disaster we are facing in my riding especially—which has the fastest growing urban indigenous community in the province and for whom mental health issues are top priority—if we don't make changes to the broken structure?