Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank our witnesses for very compelling testimony.
I'd like to start with the friendship centres. I am familiar with the incredibly important work that you do and also what you mentioned about basing it on the lived experiences, and certainly in Ontario, most indigenous people are living in urban areas. In my riding, I have an indigenous youth council and some of the stories are very much along the lines of Inuit or indigenous young people coming to Ottawa, fleeing households in which there is violence, and then not being able to find a safe place to live, a place where they will not then face the same kind of violence. I know that advocacy led to our announcement of $720 million for the indigenous shelter and transitional housing initiative. One of those will be right here in Ottawa for Inuit women.
How important is that and how important is it that people will be able to live within their cultural community but also have that safe housing? I note that you mentioned that there's a gap in government policy on urban indigenous, in my view, particularly for youth, young women. What more can we do? Should we be expanding that project? How do we resolve this?