Thank you, and my thanks to our guests for being here. My apologies for being delayed. I sent notice to the chair that I would be late, and I apologize for that.
My first question is to Chief Jacobs. Grand Chief Thompson was quoted in the paper as saying that one of the potential solutions was being allowed to keep the proceeds of crime money. I wondered if you could expand on this a bit, so I could understand better how it would work.
Second, in my home province, there has been collective work done between first nations people and the federal government. Treaties have been developed where tobacco was taxed, but the tax stayed in the first nations community. It goes back to being used for whatever development the community needs. I wonder if you see this as something that would work in other places.
When I sat on the health committee, and the funding was frozen for tobacco reduction strategies in the aboriginal community, I can remember asking the health minister whether that money would be removed. He said that it would not be, that it would be held for other proposals to be submitted. I'm not on the health committee, I don't know where that's gone, but I was assured that it would not be removed and that the money would be held. I will take responsibility for following up on this—that's a question I was wondering about.
Finally, you've talked very legitimately about the need to do this together. Independent action doesn't work, and there are lots of examples, not just today but however many hundreds of years back, to show that it doesn't work. If we could all take three steps this week or this month, what do you think they'd be, to start collectively working on this? That's for anybody.