Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning. I'd like to thank the witnesses for participating in our study, which is a very important study.
Often, we look at first nations governments under third party management and we see it as a mismanagement issue. If we look really closely, we'll see that, in many cases, it's not really a mismanagement issue. It's a revenue issue. I had an opportunity to visit many first nations communities. You look at their infrastructure failing. The cost on first nations to do things, especially the isolated communities, is three times more. There is a gap there in funding to be able to sustain what they have. That really troubles me.
If we look at revenue and the abilities of federal, provincial, and municipal governments, we see that they have the ability to tax. They get linear assessment from pipelines and everything else, and if they need more revenue, they have the ability to raise taxes. I believe first nations do not have that capacity to increase their revenue.
I think the real question is, what can we do to raise revenue in first nations communities? I'd like to open up that question to all our witnesses.