Thank you very much, Monsieur Lessard, for your question.
In my view, it's very simple. The federal government on reserve has a responsibility to adequately and flexibly fund children and family services, be they for adoption or child welfare, to an equitable and culturally based level. That is not my standard; that is the standard of the Department of Indian Affairs.
According to the Auditor General in 2008, they failed to meet that standard. Although they've launched something called an enhanced funding model, their own evaluation, dated 2010 and done by the Indian affairs department, echoes the finding of the Auditor General, which said this is not equitable.
The good news is there is a solution to it. Back in 2005 there was an expert report prepared by over 20 leading academics across the country, including five economists, that costed out the shortfall in child and family services on reserve. At the time, it would have cost less than half a percent of the federal surplus budget to make sure these children had an equitable chance of staying safely in their homes. The federal government chose not to implement that, and has not implemented that solution up to this day.
So we would ask the federal government to take immediate action to ensure the culturally based equity of all children and their families in adoption and child welfare care on reserve.