I would like to come back to what you said about funding through the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. You were saying that funds for certain services are allocated to Health Canada. But previously, the money was allocated directly to the communities. The money was there for structural projects in the communities. Now it is Health Canada that handles this.
So, what happened? We were giving hope to the communities with promising projects, but it was decided to transfer management of the money to a central authority, because there was a loss of control. We talked about autonomy for the communities, but that was part of it. It was based on the basic needs of the community in terms of healing. Let's go back to healing, which has to be community-wide.
We talked about the men's role. Their role in all of that has to be seen in the family context. What is the role of the father, the mother and the children? We talked about this earlier, and Ms. Denis-Damée also talked about it. We see children 7 or 8 years of age becoming adults. That happens because they were taught that it had to be that way. But life isn't like that. There is a need to talk about the role of the parent in light of people's experience in the residential schools and so on. The family has to again be at the centre of the communities and there must be a focus on communications. I believe Ms. Archambault also referred to that. We need to talk about communication, the role of the father and the role of the mother.
In several communities, it is often the women who are working. The role of provider was mentioned and we considered whether men want to be providers. But perhaps we should be thinking of the other roles that a man may play. Hunting, fishing and being out on the land are not as prevalent as they were before. So we have to find alternatives. We keep coming back to the same issues. They may decide to give the money to Health Canada, but they may as well give it to the Good Lord in that case. Health Canada comes into our community and tells us what we have to do with federal programs that don't reflect the basic reality of our communities.