Madam Chair, hopefully I'll answer all the little bits there. If not, please remind me if I missed something.
You started by talking about drinking water advisories and how many communities are impacted. Our audit covered the period from November 2015 to November 2020. Over that time, 100 long-term drinking water advisories were lifted. At the end of our audit, 60 remained. Those 60 that remain are across 41 communities in the country.
Steps were made to lift some of the long-term drinking water advisories. As you mentioned, the government also mentioned in December that they would not meet the commitment by March. We saw that as well, that they will not meet it by the end of this month.
One of the fundamental issues is the funding formula. This funding formula has not been revisited in 30 years. I would agree with you. Thirty years is a bit of a long-standing issue. Thirty years is a long time to not revisit a funding formula. We found that it's not meeting the needs of the first nations, it's not addressing the actual costs, it hasn't been updated to reflect new technology that might be there, and one of the repercussions is likely that operators are not being paid the same amount as their counterparts in other parts of the country. Hence, having qualified operators is impeding the ability to have good, effective water treatment systems.
It is about finding and addressing those root causes, and not just temporary solutions.