I think the fundamentals underlying this issue are the same ones my predecessors had. They are the same ones that my successors have. The fundamentals are broken. Until Parliament gets around to changing legislation and structures, the department is pedalling into the wind, trying to get results with a very poor tool kit.
If you go through a few of them, I mean, for the on-reserve population, which is about half of Canadian indigenous people, the setup is communal land tenure and social housing. It's what some people have called socialist economics and socialist outcomes, but I won't get political there.
Because of the Indian Act, everything is a workaround. It's a workaround land registry. It's a workaround for mortgages, which you heard about, because you can't put up the same kind of security for mortgages. It's a workaround for secure tenure, which is called certificates of possession. There's almost no private insurance market. There's almost no private sector that builds and manages properties. There's very little multiple-unit housing. It's almost all single-family dwellings. There's almost no tapping into the capital markets.
You know, my truth to power message to you and to the Auditor General is that there will never be enough taxpayer money to get where you want to go. You have to tap into capital markets, like the rest of Canadians.