Thank you Mr. Chair, and happy new year.
I want to say thank you again to you for coming to the committee all the way from Nunavut. It's a long way away. I was there this summer. Many have heard that story probably too many times. It's a beautiful area. It's a little colder up there than it is here right now. It's about -30C° plus.
Recently I was visiting the Kitselas band in B.C. with our leader, Pierre Poilievre, and one of the things we were honoured to be briefed on was how they were trying to preserve their language. What was highlighted by other colleagues in the meeting today was about some of the elders. There aren't necessarily a whole lot of elders left, depending on the community. Also, to help with that process, there aren't a lot of youth who are able to put that down on paper to really translate and get the language down.
It made me want to ask you some questions and raise some concerns around how we could be doing better. Certainly, in 2019, it was announced that the government was going to proceed, and since then almost $1 billion has been allocated to make this happen.
Karliin, I heard you say what things still need to be fixed, and I want to get into that a little more.
It's about outcomes, because I think we want to see that this is actually getting done. There are a lot of challenges around it. I'll start with Karliin and we'll go to Kitty after that.
What still needs to be done? What could be done better to achieve the outcomes? We heard about long-term funding and those kinds of things, but here's some time for you to say, “If I were the person doing this, this is what I would do.”
We'll start with Karliin.