Thank you very much.
My name is Keith Maracle. I'm a Mohawk from the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte in the Deseronto-Shannonville area. I've worked in native housing since 1974.
The First Nations National Building Officers Association was formed in 2003. When working with some of my colleagues across the country, we would get together in Ottawa; everybody was under the same program but we were all doing something different. Everybody wanted us to do something different. Ontario wasn't doing the same thing that other provinces were doing. We got together and decided we would put the First National Building Officers Association together. At that time we hired John Kiedrowski as our project manager.
We're a non-profit organization. We don't get involved in politics at the first nations level or any other. Our association likes to be the odd man out, you might say. Our association is all volunteers, except for our project manager. We're the only association in Canada that works specifically with first nations on housing issues, inspections, building codes, and stuff like that.
We recently established a partnership with the Canadian Construction Materials Centre. Under that we'll get their advice on technical issues and stuff like that, which we can pass along to our members. Our biggest and hardest thing is to keep our members up to date with what's going on in the building codes and stuff. These are changing so quickly, and with the minimum funding we get, it's very hard for us to keep up.
Since our inception we've worked very hard on the living conditions of our first nations people. We see a lot of stuff. I'm probably one of the most experienced inspectors, FNNBOA member, in the field. There are 132 first nations in Ontario. I've worked on a 128 of them. I've travelled from Labrador to British Columbia in the last 20 years doing training courses, and I've dealt with many first nations in between.
In 1974 we started an Indian inspection unit in Ontario. It was a pilot project put together with funding mostly from Indian Affairs and some funding from CMHC. Then in 2003 we started FNNBOA, the First Nations National Building Officers Association. In the first five years we couldn't spend all of the money you guys gave us in both organizations. After five years, we get crumbs. We have to fight for our money. Right now, I think FNNBOA gets about—