From our perspective, the way I see it, it's a transformation that's occurring in this country right now. I hope all governments would support that transformation and not say, “Oh, the Liberals started it, so we can't support it” or “The NDP started it, so we can't support it” or “The Bloc started it, so we can't support it”.
There's a transformation, a change, toward action and toward an ideology in this country for nation to nation and government to government that's really resonating for change. It's going to change the future. I'm telling you, as a leader with 40 years' experience in fighting for indigenous rights, this nation-to-nation and government-to-government transformation has already fundamentally changed where we're going. It's going to see massive change, and I hope every party supports this.
When you look at this particular process and action plan, we will be involved, as long as it's respected and nation to nation and government to government. We are governments in the Prairies. We operate governments. We are democratically elected like anybody else. In fact, we're probably more democratically elected than the leaders of this country, based on the structure of our constitution.
When you look at it from that context, as long as there's a clear respect for us as a government, we will be involved and should always be involved. If you're going to leave us out, I don't care what party you are, then it's a failure. You're going to fail. I don't care who you are or how smart you think you are or how good you think you are, you will fail if you don't have an inclusionary ideology attached to it: government to government and nation to nation is the right approach.
I assure you that in this country 10 years from now—if I look around at the crowd, we're still going to be alive, I hope—with the actions that you see today on government to government and nation to nation and the funding formulas, you're going to see changes.
I'll give you one example. In Manitoba, ever since the transformation of our power to make decisions on the basis of housing, in a year and half we had 600 families who bought their own houses. Six hundred families—young families—bought their own houses. They own them. Think about this. Twenty years from now, those kids will have an asset from their parents, who are going to leave it behind for them. They're going to have a head start.
When you start looking at this, as long as we're treated as a government, respected as a government and included as a government, then there should be no problems in the action plan.