I just want to say it is very complicated when the kids arrive right here in Ottawa. Right now we have approximately 60 children living in group care who are from Nunavut and 15 kids who are here for complex medical reasons.
We have applied for funding to be able to support those kids. On the medically complex kids, it was heartbreaking to know that they were here. I did not know until about a year ago, when CHEO brought it to my attention. They had not seen an Inuk face or heard Inuktitut since they had left their homeland. We are there now doing visits.
The complexity is that they arrive here without documentation and they go to the school system that says, “Where's your documentation?”, because in Ontario we document kids until they're blue in the face so that we can prove the services that they need. There's a real gap there.
We've been to Nunavut a number of times to talk about this gap, but the reality is that from a legal perspective the guardian is still Nunavut social services, yet they're living in Ontario. It is a complex issue that we have brought forward to ITK and we look forward to working with them on solutions that work for these kids.