I think the FES, as it was called earlier, talked about the $926.7 million. I think about $90 million of that went specifically to urban. What becomes a challenge is that we don't want to be looking at on-reserve in-the-north communities as a comparator group for urban indigenous people. I think there is enough need and enough capacity within the urban settings that we should be thinking about it as a group on its own. We don't want to get into “does it go here or does it go there?” Every resource going to first nations, Métis and Inuit governments for the work they're doing in the communities is absolutely needed. That's probably not enough to build the capacity. We're trying to close gaps from a historical lack of investment in our capacity and infrastructure.
Standing on our own, trying to convince levels of government in different departments about the need for culturally specific urban indigenous supports and responses to COVID, has been a challenge. We work well with Indigenous Services, the group that we have our federal program with, but I had conversations early on with other departments where I was starting from scratch about why it's necessary to fund a network like friendship centres or other urban indigenous organizations.
Our respective provincial-territorial associations were in constant contact with the provincial governments and relaying that information to us as well, as we were relaying information to them. It was quite frustrating earlier, because each level of government was looking to the other: “This is your jurisdiction” or “No, this is your jurisdiction”. Meanwhile, we have friendship centre staff cooking meals out of their own homes to deliver to people.
I don't mind taking up those fights at the national level or trying to get people to talk to each other. Where I think it's unfair is that the local friendship centres, just being out there, providing those supports.... I don't think it's fair that they are the ones who have to fight and really convince people of the needs. They're doing it, and they're going to do it out of their pockets or in terms of the financial health of their own organizations.
We're just trying to make sure that people know the realities and make sure that people making decisions about funding and policy and program designs are aware that this is a very real thing that's happening. Specific responses are needed outside of the current structure that we have.