Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I just want to begin by addressing my Liberal colleague's comment on room to improve. I think this room is far greater than that comment provides. This is, I think, a very serious situation that's provided by the government, and it has mounted. This is really a situation in which the whole house, not just one room, needs to be improved. This is an extreme situation.
Our country's most disadvantaged, as you mentioned, are being left alone to deal with these kinds of violences and barriers by themselves. The core of what this committee and our work here provide must be showing the government with urgency how this must seize their attention immediately.
We can't continue to disadvantage these groups for so long. I don't want to have to sit here for another decade and have to talk about the same thing Ms. Hogan mentioned. Some of these issues have persisted since 2009. That's just not acceptable.
I think that comment diminishes in many ways the reality of the severity of this and the people who are being left behind.
My riding is one of the largest in terms of its urban indigenous population. It's also plagued by a massive amount of poverty. Community members in my city have done extraordinary work to actually do this work on the ground level without the government. They've provided for themselves and tried their best to survive. They're literally selling bottles and doing what they can to feed themselves.
This is the condition in which we're seeing people in my community suffering right now. Without community members supporting each other, we wouldn't have a community where I'm from. It's really because of each other that it's happening.
Your report says really clearly that the outreach activities that ESDC conducted with indigenous communities were inadequate. Those were largely for rural communities. I just want to ask, given the fact that a majority of indigenous people now live in urban centres, how are they being consulted and did your report look at the condition of those populations as hard to reach?