Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for joining us today.
I want to start with a bit of a comment. The ability and responsibility that parliamentarians have to scrutinize the spending of government is one of the most important tasks we have. It's the ability to look at what the plans are through the budget process, and it's the ability through main estimates and a variety of accountability mechanisms to actually see how the government is spending the dollars that people work so hard for.
Of course, you'll notice that we have a really important structure whereby we do that, and I want to note that first nations communities, unfortunately, do not have that same opportunity, with the lack of the enforcement of transparency via the first nations transparency act. They do not, and it's getting worse for a number of communities to get that basic information so they can look at it and hold their governments to account for how they spend the money. Certainly, an example is the lunch program money that went missing. I think that if communities had detailed information, they would perhaps recognize that they weren't getting that lunch program.
I wanted to put that on the record, because I continue to be very concerned that there is not an opportunity for communities to have the same privileges that we do in holding their governments to account.