First of all, thank you to our witness. Thank you for appearing today.
I note that just about a year ago, a year ago tomorrow, you were in my home province of Nova Scotia at my alma mater, St. Francis Xavier University, for a conference. The conference website, you'll be interested to know, is still up and it indicates that you are one of Canada's leading and most eloquent spokespersons for the promotion and strengthening of first nations cultures and knowledge. You reinforced that image today, I must tell you.
You talked about some of the challenges on reserve in terms of family poverty, poor housing, and family substance abuse, and I want to focus for a moment on housing. You talked about, obviously, the optimal conditions that are the norm outside of reserves. Can you talk some more about the situation in terms of housing standards on reserves, and the difficulty first nations have in meeting those challenges, and what measures ought to be taken to deal with that?
Do you feel that the measures proposed in the Kelowna accord were adequate, or not adequate? What's your view on that?
Then could you go from there perhaps and tell us more about your sense...? Help me understand more and give me some examples of the way you would think a better system would work where first nations would have their own laws that are culturally sensitive on reserve and perhaps elsewhere.