I wouldn't want to say yes or no to that question. Shelters are still a band-aid. They are an emergency response to violence that has already happened.
We hope to try to build some evidence around investment and prevention, which would only reduce the hard financial costs of medevacs, rehabilitation treatment out of territory, and so on.
There is a policy issue that I bring forward every year and that I think would benefit from a recommendation by this committee. The federal government, through INAC, provides funding for shelters on-reserve only. If we think about that in terms of what many would consider to be a fiduciary responsibility, not a policy-based decision—if we think about the federal government's fiduciary responsibility via the Constitution—Inuit communities are specifically excluded from accessing any federal funds specific to shelters in indigenous communities.
It was around $40 million a year. This government doubled it to $80 million a year, but as I have said quite recently, that's double the nothing that Inuit communities have been able to access. The federal government will tell us that shelters are the responsibility of provincial and territorial governments. That may be the case, but looking at the Government of Nunavut as an example, with the myriad of serious issues that they are trying to triage on a daily basis, we know that shelters haven't made it up their list of priorities as they should. As a result, nothing is done.
That could be a very significant and substantive recommendation from this committee—that Inuit communities be able to access equitably federal funding for shelters in indigenous communities. I really appreciate that question.