It's the other MP McLeod.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for your presentation to us today.
First off, I want to say that I'm quite pleased with the amount of progress we have made in getting the aboriginal governments back to the negotiating tables in the Northwest Territories. I think we are moving towards self-governance in the future, and having 10 sets of discussions all going at the same time is really refreshing to see. Also the idea of bringing in four MSRs to review some of the more challenging negotiations is something that I think is going to bring some good results.
I had an opportunity to meet with Mary Simon the other day on the studies she is doing, and we had a very good discussion.
I'm looking at the supplementary estimates document. There is one area in which we have money, but I want to flag something. I've said this before, so it's probably not going to be new to you. We are studying suicides across Canada, mostly in our smaller indigenous communities. In the north it is a huge issue, as you know. On average, doing my own math and using Statistics Canada information, we're estimating that in the three territories, we have a suicide every eight to ten days. Since we started our suicide study a little over a year ago, we have had over 50 in the north.
When we look at the breakout of the money, the $8.4 billion that was announced for aboriginal people, we don't qualify for any of those dollars. There is no real carve-out for us under that. The post-secondary education money that's been announced, we don't qualify for. The money Jane Philpott has announced through Health, for younger children, we don't qualify for. Jordan's principle doesn't apply to us. As aboriginal governments, we have never received housing money except this time around for the Inuvialuit, which was good. Hopefully that trend is going to continue.
We talk about culture and recreation centres. Our aboriginal centres don't qualify for those, because we don't have reserves, so almost everything you announce doesn't apply to us. We have communities that are full of aboriginal people, but they are public communities.
I'm hoping we are going to try to find a way through that so that it is fair. Our fears are being confirmed through the Auditor General. He's reviewed our community and said we're not meeting all the infrastructure needs, that we are really falling below what needs to be funded. The aboriginal government claims that have been settled, the Auditor General has reviewed and said we're not meeting our obligations, so we have a lot of work to do.
As I look at the supplementary estimates document we have in front of us, I see that there is going to be some work done on an Arctic regional environmental study, which I am really happy to see move forward finally. However, the breakout under vote 1 and vote 10 really doesn't seem to be fair. As you stated, vote 1, which is over $900,000, is for the department. Over 50% of the money is going to go to the government, to the department. Then there is $850,000 in vote 10.
Could you tell me what the department is going to do with the $900,000? Why does it need more than half of it? Are they going to do the bulk of the study? Is the $850,000 going to be available for the aboriginal governments or territorial governments? It's not clear to me.