I was going to suggest that the analyst grab some of the data from, at least, some of the projects throughout the years that the foundation did the good work that I saw on the ground. I was immensely upset when the previous government cut funding to that foundation because it did such good work.
I'm going to go off on a tangent and agree with my colleague from the NDP in saying that, yes, there are good things that could be done through organizations such as the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. It doesn't always have to come from government. Oftentimes when the federal government does something or one of its departments does something in terms of health, it's well meant but done in stringent boxes. It's not done with the flexibility that's needed in a lot of our first nations communities. And I say our first nations communities because I'm Ontario's only first nations member of Parliament. So I'm well aware of the problems in our communities and in the communities of Hunter Tootoo who is sitting here today. The communities experience amazing rates of suicides and other problems. Michael McLeod from the Northwest Territories just had a rash of suicides over the last couple of weeks in his communities.
I've said this a number of times at this committee: I don't want my successors 10, 20, 100 years from now sitting at another committee studying indigenous youth suicide. We need to do something now, and I believe that the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was doing was amazing work because I saw the work. But again, it's a two-part stage. In my mind, at least, and in the minds of a lot of the people I've talked to, we don't want to create this industry just on the misery in indigenous communities. We want to end that misery somewhere. I know that's what the foundation did so well. They were doing programs built within the communities that were finally putting a stop to the feelings of despair and the problems that lead to other problems in the community and cost all of society so much.
I see it in my community of Thunder Bay where we have a lot of people coming from the north who aren't adjusting well to the city of Thunder Bay. We have colonialist attitudes among institutions. We see it with an investigation of the Thunder Bay police force right now. I really don't want to see this continuing, and the work that the foundation did was a starting point but not an ending point.
Other than restarting an organization like the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, do you have any recommendations on how to help to at least start to end these crises?