To be clear, they didn't say, “Let's just leave it the way it is.” There were two serious efforts made to update the formula, in 2003 and in 2014. As context for why that didn't succeed, let me give you two data points.
The first is that between 1999 and 2016, Parliament voted for the exact same level of funding for this program in every one of those years. There was no growth in the program funding over those almost 20 years. The need for those programs grew dramatically over that time. In an environment with no new funding, when we attempted to update the formula in 2003 and 2014, we worked with indigenous partners and were unable, not surprisingly, to reach agreement with them because, even though everyone's needs had grown, adjusting to the new formula and the new data would mean some would lose funding because that would be the only way to fund the others, whose needs had grown even greater.
The first barrier was that indigenous communities did not accept that there could be any change in the formula. They said there needed to be incremental funding, but for 20 years, Parliament did not vote for incremental funding.
The second challenge, as you are aware, is that decisions on grants and contributions of this order in departments are not delegated to people like me. Ministers make those decisions. I have seen this across a wide range of programs I've dealt with, such as the aboriginal policing program at Public Safety and the culture programs at Canadian Heritage, where you have no resource growth but a growth in the client communities. Not surprisingly—as political actors, I think you would all understand—ministers are reluctant to make changes to a program that will result in some recipients losing funding and others getting more, even though all of their needs have grown.
We did attempt to revise the formula—twice—and were unsuccessful, both with indigenous communities and ultimately with ministers in convincing them to do it, notwithstanding their efforts to do that.
How is that going to change? The new element is that we have $100 million in new funding. In my experience, that is what it takes to get movement on the new funding, so we are negotiating with indigenous partners on the criteria we are going to use for the new funding to ensure that, as the Auditor General indicates, these factors are taken into account.
I just want to be clear: It wasn't that officials were not trying to do this; it was that indigenous communities did not want to make those changes, given that the changes would involve cuts for them, and that political actors—in my view, not surprisingly, in an environment where they didn't have additional resources—were not willing to do that either. What has changed is the new resources, and that's what we're going to try to do.