I opened by indicating that I was going to say some things that would make people uncomfortable, but the reality is that in the immediate term, we've already reached that breaking point. Just look at the news reports that you hear and see every day across this country, here in British Columbia in particular, with regard to the opioid crisis, once again overrepresented by indigenous people. We have people literally dying on our doorsteps. My good friend at the Ontario Aboriginal Housing Services in Ottawa indicates to me that almost every week somebody dies if not on his doorstep then down the street from his doorstep. These are indigenous people who are seeking a sense of safety and belonging in the urban, rural and northern environments. The short-term crisis is that we've already reached that breaking point.
If we start looking at the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, over 200 times in that final report the notion of housing was mentioned. The ongoing inability of the federal government to make dedicated investments into urban, rural and northern housing programs will continue to see those numbers rise among the missing and murdered, among the opioid users, among the homeless. We heard this just in Smithers. Look at the Goodacre report just released here in B.C. about how another provincially funded program targeting primarily indigenous communities was run through a non-indigenous entity. There's no sense of safety. There's no sense of belonging. People don't feel as though they can actually execute effective change to save their lives, and they reference that place as a place to go and die.
Without immediate change, we are going to see those numbers continue to rise. We've already reached the breaking point.