Thank you for coming and sharing your story with us. I know it must be very difficult to share the story.
I come from the community of Thunder Bay in northwestern Ontario. I'm Ontario's only first nation member of Parliament, and I often see institutional racism across government agencies, in police forces, in city councils, and in municipalities, all across institutions.
I'll give you an example. The friendship centre in Thunder Bay was attempting to have a youth centre built. Unfortunately, because it was a first nation or Indian friendship centre that was proposing the youth centre, there was a lot of vocal opposition. They never said that the reason they were vocal was that the Indian Friendship Centre was the proponent, but many people felt that was the reason there was vocal opposition. Then the city ultimately defeated or didn't approve the centre, so it was a lost opportunity in my community to help out first nation youth and indeed all youth in our community.
It's now a chicken wing spot. It's not that I don't like chicken wings, but I think a better use of that facility could have been as a youth centre.
One of the great things that we've heard about—and I've heard this from my colleagues—is the work that friendship centres do across the country. I'm not that familiar with your friendship centre in Halifax, and although, the chair and I have a friend from the Eskasoni Mi'kmaw Nation named Jaime Batiste, I'm not that familiar with his community or the communities on the east coast.
Could you let us know about anything that your friendship centre does specifically with youth or has been planning to do with youth in a preventive way to help youth avoid these situations, or just to help our youth generally?