Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon to each of you, and thank you for being here.
This is no doubt a very important issue. I mean, it's hard to find the right words to express it, in the sense that it's 5%...a full eight times more than the general Canadian population, which is, I believe, under 8%; it's not even a per cent.
It seems that we're taking...and I don't know about “we”. Maybe it's the government or maybe successive governments. Who the hell knows? But it seems that we have a crisis situation that is not being addressed in a crisis management way or methodology.
I just want to ask a couple of questions, and I'll start with you, Ms. Fraser. In your remarks, on page three, you said, “Although the new formula does not address the inequities of the existing formula....” Could you expand on that particular statement?
We had the department in front of us a couple of weeks ago, and they have put a lot of emphasis on a new funding formula and a tripartite arrangement, almost using the Alberta model. They're taking this now across the country. If the Alberta model doesn't work, or if it has significant challenges, then we're only importing that problem across the country, without fully understanding what's happening in Alberta.
All the department has told us to date is that there are some preliminary results that point to some improvement. That's all they said. They never quantified it. There was no qualification of that particular statement. Maybe we didn't ask enough of the appropriate questions in order to get to the crux of it.
Can you explain that particular statement to me and expand on that somewhat? I think the new formula you're talking about is the one they're using in Alberta.
Then to the Auditor General in B.C., with your findings and this new approach by the federal government, what is the relationship between the federal government and the authorities in B.C. about moving to this new formula? What kind of approach are they taking? Did you find much collaboration amongst the different authorities, both federally and provincially and first nations-wise?