Thank you for presenting here today. I certainly can understand the level of frustration. I spent six years working as a band manager in my hometown, my home community, and I can relate to the struggles with ongoing financial resources. I've had opportunities as recently as last week to talk to some of the chiefs, and I think every one of the communities in my riding is in a deficit situation, every band council except for the ones that have settled land claims and self-government agreements.
I remember back when I was working as band manager, there were many different pots of money to apply for and our core funding was small. Everything was application based, and that slowly evolved to closing the pots of money and putting money into core funding. Our buildings got fancier and we had more of what we needed and things got to a point where it looked to be doing very well, but then the core funding started to get cut.
Is that where it started? I understand the agreements and the governance issues, but I'm trying to find out whether the change in core funding levels is the reason you started accumulating a deficit.