Mr. Speaker, when I speak to the minister, I know she is very concerned about the child welfare system. Right now the system is completely broken, but throwing more money at it will not make the system better. Often it is not a question of more money. For instance, we could put more money into the system, but there is the great chance we would take more children from their parents because we would provide incentives for doing that. There would be more incentives and more money to take those children.
Currently in Manitoba, 11,000 kids are in care of the state. I have been pushing for a total reform of this entire system. I have members of my staff working on this. I have cases on child and family services. We all care about this, but we will have to sit down as indigenous peoples and have a deep and profound conversation about how we raise our children, how we look after them, who is supposed to look after them.
Our children in many communities have become a natural resource, our greatest natural resource, but not in the good way we often use in the House. They have become a natural resource in the sense that they are a product passed from person to person who can generate money. I do not want to imply that foster families are not doing a good job, because there are many great foster families.
We really need to be thoughtful and considerate about the direction in which we move. I hope one day we will have the funding that goes along with it, but we have to really reform the system beforehand.