Thank you very much, Mr. Fortin.
I will try to look at what it is in regard to the first nations specifically.
In that community, we've been inundated via an exhausting list of external factors—drugs, loss of jobs, money, and under this current COVID environment, people being restricted once again to maintaining no other contact outside of their community. We're then seeing an increase in domestic violence. We're seeing child abuse. We're seeing people not having resources available.
First nations elders are held in esteem in a greater portion of the communities. However, because of whatever socio-economic conditions, mostly financial, the elder becomes a victim of constraint, limitation and restriction. It's those types of abuses. We've seen them. We've heard them. We heard what happened when the Indian residential school monies came out. That was why power of attorney documents came forward. But what didn't come forward after that? The identification and requirement for wills for these elders. Who does the money go to? Then we have people fighting in the community.
But for the most part, the elders, because of the wisdom, because of what they have obtained...and we're now moving into a new generation of elders who have a different level of ways of knowing. That will become part of what will be a policy, political and legislative structure as we move into the 21st century.