Social inclusion almost sounds like a first nations concept. In my community, I was raised by my grandmother and grandfather and they basically told me that as a leader you are only as strong as the weakest person in your community. I think that kind of captures what social inclusion is. In a community, everybody has to be treated and respected the same way.
In regard to the housing, in our community right now we can't build any more homes because we don't have water and we haven't had adequate water for a while. Right now, we run on a reservoir system that provides 70,000 litres of water to our community and yet it takes 80,000 litres of water just to extinguish a house fire. So we're below even the basic needs for water in our community, so we can't build homes. We have 320 members in our band and more than half of them live off the reserve because we don't have any housing. And it's inadequate housing as it is. We've got people all crammed and living together in a house. Some of the houses are extremely old. We have mould problems in our communities. We have leaky roofs in our community and yet there's the perception out there that first nations people get free homes and get the best homes in their communities. It's just not true.
Even to this day there are a lot of my community members who want to come back home, but we cannot build them homes because we don't have adequate water. So certainly housing is a real issue in our community.