A number of you mentioned food bank usage. As you know, the food banks came out with their annual report recently. I'm going to read you part of it here:
For the most recent year, self-identified First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people comprised 12% of those assisted by food banks. Provincial figures vary considerably, with Aboriginal people accounting for 91% of food bank clients in the territories and 35% in the four western provinces.
In B.C. about 20% of food bank usage is identified as aboriginal, and I think in B.C. the food bank rate went up around 15% on the food bank support of a couple of weeks ago.
What we want to do is identify the best strategies that we should put in a report to reduce poverty, and in our draft report in June there were a few ideas that were specifically referencing aboriginal people. Let me read a couple of them to you.
Following up on commitments originally made in the Kelowna Accord, provide adequate resources to improve the living conditions and infrastructure in aboriginal communities, provide better support to indigenous educational institutions, improve access to post-secondary education, address the gap in well-being between aboriginal children and other non-aboriginal children by providing additional funding to social programs such as aboriginal head start, the Canada pre-natal nutrition, community action plan for children, funding for child welfare agencies.
And there's the housing piece. Not only do we have to have the right housing strategy, you then have to get the money out the door. If you read The Globe and Mail this morning, there's a story there that only 1% of money identified for social housing, going back to last year, has gotten out the door.
I'd like to ask each of you if there would be two specific policy measures--by specific, they could be broader than one targeted measure, but give me one or two things that you think should be a priority in dealing with the issues that you face every day.