Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 13th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

I have to close off the questioning so that we can discuss what we're going to do on Thursday.

I want to thank the witnesses for their appearance. We really do appreciate all the information on the challenge that you have to fulfill your mandates, so thank you very much for your time.

Committee members, just quickly, we have a meeting on Thursday, but we really don't have any direction on what you would like to do. We have a few options. First, we have the Cree-Naskapi Commission report. We could ask INAC for a response. We could ask for a housing follow-up with officials, if you want and if you have more questions. Or we could just talk about committee business and planning. What is the pleasure of the committee?

Do you want a response from the Cree-Naskapi if we can get the...?

[Rod Bruinooge, Conservative, Winnipeg South, MB]

We could spend a little time on planning a more comprehensive agenda, instead of having all these one-off meetings.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Yes, we definitely need some focus.

We also have a motion—and I've had notice—that we will bring forward for discussion at that time.

Is it the pleasure of the committee just to plan where we want to go?

Madam Neville.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

It would be useful to have a comprehensive planning meeting. It would also be useful, Mr. Chair, to try to determine what we want to do with the housing issue. We've received the material from Ms. Hurley. We've heard representations today. Do we want to make recommendations based on that information? Do we want further information? I don't think we can leave that without some conclusion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

Then bring your ideas, and what we'll do is start the first part of the meeting by looking for any motions or recommendations for this committee regarding housing. We'll then move into planning after that is exhausted. I'll try to give not more than a half hour, if we need that much time.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Mr. Chair, do we have a subcommittee that sets our agenda?

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

The subcommittee did meet to look at what we were going to focus on. We went through a number of things, and it was decided that there wasn't a desire of the subcommittee to look into housing. The discussion at that time was to actually look into aboriginal children's welfare, to look into that whole discussion. That is what the subcommittee brought back, but we haven't formulated that. We need to discuss that to see if that's the direction the committee wants to go in.

Madam Karetak-Lindell.

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

I don't think it was that we didn't want to look into housing; we just didn't want to do a whole new study, because those studies have already been done. We thought we would look to see what recommendations had been implemented and what the status of the previous housing reports was.

That might be taken the wrong way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Colin Mayes]

I shouldn't have said we weren't going to look at housing; we were just going to make some sort of recommendation.

Is there anything else for the committee? No? Then that's what we'll do.

The meeting is adjourned.