Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And thank you to the witnesses for coming today.
My name is Greg Rickford. I am the member of Parliament for the Kenora riding and parliamentary secretary for Indian and northern affairs.
First of all, I want to congratulate the commission on its important work. In fact the communities, by way of this important work on some impressive statistics, which you've indicated has resulted in high retention factors, young people returning from substantive training, and family formation in those communities.... It's a bit of a nuanced dimension to some of the ongoing housing issues that remain in first nations communities and that are in fact long-standing.
Mr. Saunders, I want to respectfully say that I'm not completely persuaded by your opinion with respect to the role of CMHC and the work that the Cree Regional Authority is doing. As you can imagine, I have some information and experience in these regards. In fact I was in Thunder Bay not too long ago, making some announcements for a number of first nations communities in the northern Ontario region. This is obviously a region where first nations communities have not had some of the processes and good fortune that by your own admission have benefited your communities greatly.
The overall response was favourable, to the extent that funding formulas through CMHC provided communities with more flexible models to meet the changing demands, as Mr. Kanatewat has pointed out, around things like home ownership and the ability of bands to have leasing and renting agreements. I recognize of course that this isn't a panacea, but it does represent a substantial change, if you will, in some of the intractable problems historically that the department and the bands have had.
I see that you're nodding; you may have some agreement with this.
My question might be more appropriate for the Cree Regional Authority. I was wondering if you could comment on any knowledge you have with respect to housing programs, and funding formulas specifically, as they relate to CMHC, which take us a little further down the road in terms of overall flexibility for housing programs in those communities.