Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for being present with us today.
What we see here are four very damning reports that I think our ministries and the government have known about. You said that in your opening statement. They've known about these issues persisting. What I have to say is that, in many ways, the people who are experiencing this discrimination have known about it for far longer. People with disabilities and the indigenous community members have been saying this for decades and decades.
This level of systemic discrimination is overt. It's dangerous and it's killing people. I know this. In my community in Edmonton Griesbach, and I'm sure in every single constituency here, we have people in our communities, every single one of us, who are being impacted by the systemic problems that continue to plague our public service. It's literally killing people.
I want to thank you, Auditor General, for outlining what I think is a terrible process and a lack of accountability in our systems. On the fact that you've had to table these multiple times, I can feel your level of frustration. I understand that level of frustration deeply from my own experience of interacting with these systems. We can even just look around this room and know that a GBA+ analysis is probably warranted in every single ministry. Understanding what that looks like and ways to actually improve it are things that I'm concerned about.
The fact that these issues persist and they continue to persist is eroding our trust in these public institutions. I'm concerned about how we regain that trust with the community members who are cited in these reports, in particular indigenous and Black community members and persons with disabilities. We know, not just from these reports but from their own experiences, that these issues persist.
When I looked at some of these reports, I couldn't help but feel that we've more than failed these populations. Our government has, and subsequent governments since as early as 2009. It breaks my heart to think that we could have done so much more in those times. These recommendations could have helped people in those times from 2009 to today, which is a long period of time. We're talking about people's lives at the end of the day here and about how we can actually make them better.
I'm concerned with the fact that oftentimes, especially in my short and limited time in this place, I've already found that there's an incredible amount of information but so little action. There is so little action that it makes me incredibly frustrated.
I can only sympathize with you, Ms. Hogan, and understand that your role in this is incredibly difficult, knowing that you'll be coming to this committee, like many times before in the last three years, and you'll likely be facing the same answer: We hear you. We're going to shelve this report. We're going to look at it real good. It's going to be awesome. We can't wait for your next one.
That's 99% likely what's going to happen here, but that's not what should happen here. That's the problem. I challenge my colleagues and the government to really take seriously what these reports really mean. I'm going to work with you folks to make these things better. We're all standing ready to work with you to make this better, but why aren't they getting better?
That's my question to you, Ms. Hogan: How can we actually enforce some of this? Canadians don't deserve this. People with disabilities shouldn't have to go through extraordinary hoops and hurdles to get the basic services they're entitled to. Indigenous peoples should not be incarcerated at the rate they are by folks who have obviously learned the language of GBA+ but are not acting on that information. I'm wondering how we actually enforce change in these institutions, because it's near criminal.