I value your time at the House of Commons and thank you very much for letting me appear today.
My name is Chief Arnie Lampreau. I'm from the Shackan Indian reserve out of Merritt, the Scw'exmx nation. Our reserve lands have had devastation in the last year—fires and floods, of course COVID, and the discovery of the 215 out of Kamloops, which I'm a third-generation survivor of.
More importantly, today is about our membership, the loss of land and the costs of repairing it, because of the devastation from the fire causing some of the mudslides and the little bit of damming that's happening within the Nicola River. What we're looking at in the future is for some additions to reserve lands and also some more infrastructure for firefighting, etc.
With a lot of these things that have happened in this short while, a majority of our people were never ready for this. We have talked to the Province of British Columbia, and they have enacted an alert now, which is great.
I'm at a loss for words. I would like to say that our people have gone through a lot of hard times in the last year. I'm presently at a meeting in Vancouver with the UBCIC today, so I'm a little bit distracted. I apologize for that. There are a lot of other issues on my mind right now.
Seeing the interaction with the Prime Minister at Kamloops and the announcement of the Pope coming to Canada spark a lot of different issues for our people, as far as how we've been opening up a lot of different things in our hearts and minds. As far as the emergency part, we're looking at more training for the ESS and EOC, different objectives like that, to make our lives a bit safer and to give us a little more comfort within our homelands.
That's about all I have to say, other than I would greatly like to have some help as far as looking at safer lands for our people. Our people right now, with the lands that have washed away, basically that's what sustained us. It was about 20% of the whole IR#11, which is basically the river bottoms of that reserve land. It's gone. It's going to cost millions and millions of dollars to protect.
Thank you for your time. I appreciate everything that's happening out there in Canada.
Thank you for allowing me to have a bit of say from our little Shackan Band. Today is 200 and something days since I have been evacuated. I'm still not home. Another councillor of mine is still not home. We're still living in the Trans Mountain pipeline camp. We have been there for over 200 days. We definitely miss home, looking at housing shortages and different things like that, which affect our communities.
Thank you for your time.