Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Turnbull, for sharing some time with me. I really wanted to take a few minutes to make a couple of comments and ask a few questions.
This issue is very near and dear to my heart. I'm one of the few MPs, if not the only MP, to live in an indigenous community. I live in a community called Fort Providence, in the Northwest Territories, and I'm so glad that this committee is doing this study. It's something that's long overdue. We really need to have a committee take the time to understand what's going on in indigenous communities across the country, and specifically in the north.
In the north, we have the highest rate of suicide. We have the highest rate of murder. We have the highest rates of sexual abuse, of TB—we have it all here.
We heard tonight that the national core need is, on average, around 18%. In the Northwest Territories, it's at 42%. That's up 20% from the 2016 federal census. For us, things are not going in the right direction.
We have put a lot of money into the north, but not a lot of it is going towards housing. We have many challenges. The government has made a lot of investments, historic amounts of investment for indigenous people across the country, but it has been focused on national indigenous organizations. I think you really need to take a look at that. This committee has to take a good look at where it's going.
For us in the north, we don't belong to the national indigenous organizations, so the $1.5 billion for national organizations for housing doesn't come to us, and that's very concerning. The Reaching Home program is only for Yellowknife, so it's causing other problems because communities.... Are you asking me to pause?