Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to everybody for their presentations today, which were very interesting.
I want to start by responding to Mike Reimer from Churchill Wild.
In the Northwest Territories, we are opening up some of the tourism operations under some very strict guidelines. It's not going to cover everybody, but it's going to cover quite a few operators, so there's a lot of excitement about that.
We'd like to see the national parks consider doing the same. We're having some discussions on that front. In the Northwest Territories we are probably going to be at an 85% vaccination rate by the end of June. We have some flexibility. We're putting some very strict conditions on it. We're hoping we're going to save some of the operators, some of their businesses, and get things at least partially running.
My question, though, is to the National Association of Friendship Centres. It's around the comment that Chris made, I think, on distinctions-based funding impacts. I know that the new model of funding national organizations doesn't take in the urban indigenous, but it doesn't take in the northern indigenous either. It is an issue in the Northwest Territories. The reality is, however, that indigenous governments want to see funding flowing directly to them. In the Northwest Territories it doesn't matter which way the money flows, as long as it flows to us in the Northwest Territories. I want to ask how serious that impact is. Will it threaten the operations of the friendship centres on an ongoing basis?
I want to also point out that I am a founding member of the friendship centre in my community. I was so happy to see somebody come knocking on my door to see if I was all right. They wanted to know if I needed anything. They wanted to encourage me to get my vaccine, which I had already done.
Friendship centres do a lot of good work. I'm concerned that this issue of distinctions-based funding may impact the operations.