Thank you for the question.
Absolutely, I was there, and learned about it in The Globe and Mail, just like others.
I was at the first nations and Inuit health branch of Health Canada, and that is a really important factor in terms of Indigenous Services Canada, because that branch became part of Indigenous Services Canada, along with other sectors of the former Indigenous Affairs.
What that did was actually give us an opportunity to include health emergencies within the emergency management assistance program's scope, and in a postpandemic.... We're not quite postpandemic, but in a COVID recovery type of time, it has been so essential for us to ensure that when we have emergency evacuations we are thinking about mental health cultural supports, and that when we have health emergencies, we're thinking about infrastructure and we're thinking about other aspects of how to ensure we're responding to and also mitigating risk over time. I would say that in this space this has been such an important transformation.
The other aspect is that our mandate is different. The enabling legislation that has established Indigenous Services Canada is very different from the legislation that Indigenous Affairs was founded upon. I would encourage all members to really look at that legislation, because it speaks to the transformation of services towards self-determination of indigenous peoples. That includes health and other sectors of responsibility in this department.