Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to thank Elder Williams and Chief Erasmus for coming.
I'm going to keep my comments very brief so that you have more time to speak.
There is an acknowledgement that there is continuing work required around healing, given the fact that the government chose to put roughly $69 million into Health Canada. So there's already acknowledgement there that the healing is not finished.
I have two questions for you.
One, were you ever consulted about why the choice was made between funding Health Canada versus putting that $69 million into the Aboriginal Healing Foundation? That's question number one.
Question number two: If we should go the Health Canada route, should that continue? I pulled out a report, the Non-Insured Health Benefits Program - Annual Report 2007/2008. In the Indian residential schools program in Health Canada, they talk about the fact that services aren't available in many communities and that either people will have to be flown out, transported out, or people will have to be flown in to do the treatment.
The report indicates that, overall, the medical transportation expenses, on the first nations non-insured health benefits, take up 29% of the budget, so almost a third of that non-insured health benefits budget. But in two provinces or territories.... In Manitoba it takes up 44% for transportation and in Nunavut it takes up 49%. So I guess the question I have is instead of using community-based healing, in some communities they could use half of that budget that could be allocated for healing for transportation.
Perhaps you could answer those two questions. Were you ever given a reason for the money not being put into the Aborignal Healing Foundation? And could you comment about the amount of transportation costs that will take away from the healing?