Thank you for the opportunity to address your question.
I think it's very important right now.... To think that indigenous people will feel okay, with what I've heard, it's not okay to have them necessarily go down south for the remainder of their education.
The accessibility of a northern program is absolutely important for all indigenous communities in the north. The north of Ontario is the size of France. We have 160 first nations in Ontario, many in the north, and we've heard that many communities are very interested in developing midwifery programming in their communities. For indigenous people to have to go down south is not acceptable. They need programming in the north, and this is something that's very important to them. We need indigenous content in our programming, which northern Ontario can certainly deliver, instead of adding in any indigenous content as an afterthought. Relocating to communities like Toronto or Hamilton for university-level midwifery programming is out of the reach of many indigenous students. Gaining tuition funding is not always easy, and some of the timelines that are required, according to some of the loan institutions, to finish our degrees do not work for our communities.
There are many things to think about in terms of the closure in the north. I've heard from many indigenous students that the north is where they want to remain.