Yes, I can, absolutely. Thank you for giving me that space.
We're indigenous-led, meaning that our board, our senior staff, our medium staff and our entry-level staff are majority indigenous at every level.
In our first year, we worked in skills training, primarily in trades. I'm not an educator by background—I'm an entrepreneur—but I just saw that there were all these construction sites and all this stuff going on and we were surrounded by unemployed first nations people. Why was nobody working in these areas? I was a general contractor for a while, where I proved it could be done, just like my co-witness here.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that in our first year, we engaged more indigenous people in trades in our province than all government-funded non-indigenous institutions put together, and that was just our first year. We've grown every single year.
Now, one of the questions I didn't get asked is if I'm on the registry and if I've ever attempted to bid. The funny thing is that I used to be, but guess what? My status card expired, and that's a huge problem here. A lack of ID in rural, remote and indigenous communities is a really big problem. That's why I'm not on it.
I'm status. I'm definitely indigenous. I'm first nations. You'll find tens of thousands of people who will attest to my indigeneity and my ancestors here, yet I'm not on the registry because I have an expired status card, which is absolutely ridiculous.
Anyway, yes, the success is big. If anyone wants to check us out, our website is teacreek.ca, like the tea that you drink.
Thank you.