Thank you very much for those questions.
I'd like to specifically respond to the questions you posed regarding our presentation, the significant upfront investment that is required, has been identified, and is pretty much known to everybody, and how the payback would be significant for Canadian society in general if you do something about it now versus waiting five, ten, or fifteen years. The costs of doing nothing are as follows.
Right now, from 1999 to 2004, over a five-year period, INAC funding increased by only 1.6%, excluding inflation, while the status first nations population, according to the department, increased by 11.2%
Since 2000 budgets have been impoverished by almost 13%. Had a 6% rate of growth been applied to account for inflation and population growth, equal to what has been granted to the Canada health and social transfer, the cumulative new dollars received over the ten-year period would have been $14,584,000,000, if the funds had been provided in the same way they're provided to the Canada health and social transfer. The amount of lost funds, the difference between the 2% rate received and the need, which is 6%, is over $10 billion.
“Gathering Strength”, the federal government's response to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, has only provided $2,379,000,000, leaving a shortfall of $7,914,000,000.
For individual communities, the magnitude of lost funds in the 2006-2007 budget is 45.5% over existing funds and ranges from $1.5 million to $13.9 million per community.
That is the impact of the lack of funding provided to our communities, and it is only the actual costs right now. You also have to factor into that the cost of having people who are diabetic and the cost of people being in medical institutions because of the lack of health that we're seeing in our communities. All the other long-term effects will triple or quadruple that in the next five, ten, and fifteen years.