Thank you, Madam Chair. It's a pleasure for me to be here to sit in on this committee.
Just so my colleagues understand, I want to thank all three of the witnesses for being here, and I am going to spend my time allowing Charmaine to speak. I represent the area of the Onion Lake community, where she is from, which overlaps into the Alberta side. With respect, and with thanks to you, I will be focusing on letting Charmaine speak more to her perspectives and her stories.
Charmaine, here's what I want to start with. First of all, I think it's important that we all acknowledge that after the financial transparency act was brought into law, the vast majority of first nations communities complied with the common-sense requirements of publishing their financial statements, their leaders' compensation, and their expenses. Those are the parameters under which all of the MPs here operate, as do many other elected representatives at their levels of government. Right across the board, more work can and should be done on financial transparency.
You alluded to having to go to the department multiple times to find the information about the spending in your community. Five months ago, I sat on this committee when the minister responded to several questions about specific instances and spending disparities and concerns around where funding is going in first nations communities. She stated a number of times that the solution was to call her office, or to call the department, or to call the police, or to call a lawyer. What do you think about those comments?