Thank you.
Just a half-second later I was going to say that I support Mr. Desjarlais' concern and his absolute shock that the Minister of Indigenous Services has refused to come to this committee to speak about the horrible conditions indigenous communities face for housing. I should also point out, as vice-chair for the indigenous and northern affairs committee, that Minister Hajdu has declined our invitations to attend. In fact, there were multiple invitations to that minister. She was even invited to come to the committee to talk about supplementary estimates (B). She has yet to come to that committee to talk about supplementary estimates (B), and you know how long ago that was. I believe we now have her coming in on the Thursday after the break week to talk about the estimates, but even that is cutting it close.
That department continues to get extraordinarily large in terms of the people who are going into that department, yet we are seeing the results go down and the outcomes go down. That has been proven by the Auditor General, the Parliamentary Budget Officer and many others. We are seeing that ongoing issues with Jordan's principle, non-insured health benefits, housing, drinking water, etc., are not getting better. The fact that this minister refuses to show up to either committee, one of which is looking after indigenous and northern affairs, is absolutely shameful.
It has been pointed out to me—this potentially is an issue for this committee to deal with, and perhaps we'll get to it at the INAN committee as well—that we can actually ask the House to compel the minister to come to this committee and answer these very important questions.
Thank you, Chair.