Essentially there's a need for understanding that the growth of the indigenous economy is not going to happen in programs and services. It needs tools. It needs structures. It needs design. If we look back into the budgets to understand where we're seeing tools, structures and resources for design, there are examples like the $150-million entrepreneurship fund and initiatives like the 5% indigenous procurement target.
To the opposite of that, if we look to this last budgetary earmark of $18 billion to invest in the close of the socio-economic gap, it does not in itself establish the cause of the socio-economic gap. Therefore, I suggest that essentially the absence of indigenous economic design is not supporting a contribution to Canada's GDP or the overall experience of indigenous economic strength.
To your question, particularly around foreign investment and the environment around the natural resource sector, we need to balance this concept of the cost of doing nothing and the risk of doing nothing to be able to bring into focus a new environment of legal and economic balance. Historically, there has been an overemphasis on the legal relationship and an underemphasis on the economic relationship. We need to provide an environment of certainty that supports understanding what an environment, a global environment of investment in the Canadian economy, looks like. That certainty comes from the strength of the indigenous economic relationship and our participation within the economy itself.