Obviously, it has to be done in partnership, walking the path together. I don't want to be misrepresented as saying that this should be done unilaterally by any Parliament of Canada, but I think it's 2026 when the next Parliament starts, and after all of this time, we can't keep blaming the Indian Act, working around the Indian Act and not face up to the fact that it is software whose time has come and that we need to move on.
Apparently the next government is going to abolish the Canada Infrastructure Bank and strand its loan portfolio, so I think there's an opportunity there to bring housing and infrastructure together. My advice to any of your election platform committees is a complete reworking of the machinery of the federal government in this area. Take all of the housing and infrastructure programs and put them together. Take housing out of Indigenous Services. Take housing out of CMHC. Add it to the indigenous portfolio of the Canada Infrastructure Bank and create a Crown corporation that will do first nations housing and infrastructure in a very professional, 2026 kind of way.
You could give it all the tools that a private sector firm like Brookfield has. You could put a board of management on it, a real board of directors to hold the staff and the executives to account. You could ensure that the majority of that board was named by first nations. You could give that corporation an inspection function.
One of the problems is that there just aren't enough people out there, and if you bring in enforceable building and fire codes, you need an inspection service. If you brought all of this together and they could partner with capital markets and private sector firms, I think you would be able to do something. If we just keep putting money into the same tools, don't expect the results to fundamentally change.