I believe our numbers are counted in with the Métis National Council, something that we have opposed. For the 27 years I've been there, we've opposed that. I've made that clear to all the INAC ministers I've met over the years.
Settling a land claim with us is very important for the Northwest Territories. It's beneficial for Canada to have a sovereign country in our territory.
It's very important to the Northwest Territory Métis Nation. As I've said, we haven't received any kind of funding like this for housing. We have to start building our nation so that our government can have a future for our people to grow, to continue on and to coexist with the governments that are in our territory. It will bring in a lot of opportunities for capacity building, economic development and housing. We have our land available so that we can start building houses and so on, for our people.
Our people have not benefited from government jobs and so on. They go out and get educated. We want to keep our people in our small communities, but we can't keep them. They all move on and that's unfortunate for sure. If we had our government settled, we would have jobs for them to come home to.
We'd have our own Canada, you might as well as say, as far as I'm concerned. We'd be self-sufficient. We wouldn't be as dependent on Canada anymore. We still have to have the relationship to work together on developing our country, which is what we want to do. We want to have a relationship to coexist with one another. It would move forward all the development that is undeveloped in the Northwest Territories as well.