Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank everybody for their presentations today. This has been a really important panel for us. We have now had two panels that have been solely dedicated to the aboriginal community, and I really appreciate the diverse representation that is here.
I would like to start just by putting something out there to our speakers who represent MKO, the friendship centres, and MFNERC. One of the things you reiterated—and I know the Inuit Family Resource Centre mentioned it as well—was that poverty is directly correlated to obesity. Certainly that's what we have found in what we've heard through the past number of panel presentations. We've heard it from everyone from the Canadian Council of Food and Nutrition to medical professionals and nutritionists, and it is one of the statistics that we've seen over and over again.
This is a prevalent issue within the aboriginal community. As we've said, first nations, Inuit, and Métis seem to have no reprieve from this issue of poverty, and it has been mentioned that it's directly related to colonization. I know there are members and people who believe poverty is about corruption, poverty is about choice. I'd like to ask just whoever might want to respond to that how they feel, and what they believe or have seen in their work, in their studies, about how poverty is affecting aboriginal people, so that we can at least hear from the aboriginal community about their position on that.
That's open to anybody who might want to address it.