Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for his intervention, but the reality is that the aboriginal affairs committee did an extensive study on post-secondary education and one of the factors for success was a core-funded, aboriginal-controlled, post-secondary education institution.
We know there are other institutions in Canada that the government does contribute to, so this is my question. Given that FNTI has a long track record of successfully graduating students, and we know that first nations will be critical to help address the serious labour shortages in Canada over the next couple of decades, why will the federal government not take some responsibility, demonstrate some leadership, abandon the jurisdictional disputes, and come to the table and truly provide some core funding so that these educational institutes can operate with some level of certainty over a number of years?