Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think it's timely because I don't believe there is any one place where all the good ideas are in order to address the issues related to the policy. We want to take advantage of the expertise that this committee will bring to bear in dealing with witnesses and have a report that we can use in our conversations on establishing this new fiscal relationship with first nations.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We don't profess to doing this right. There are a number of things that can be examined. As we said, the policy is based on trying to avoid intervention, the most intervention on the third party. Are we doing it right? I don't know. We would like the outside reflection to be, “No, you're not being proactive enough in getting them out.”

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, we've been doing some review over the past half-year in order to be helpful in those technical conversations with the Assembly of First Nations.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We are bringing that work into the Assembly of First Nations relationship, and as I informed Mr. Massé, we have a deadline under the MOU for the end of the calendar year. What we're looking for is to take advantage of your work, as well, for that review.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The pool is the same, but the issue is who gets to select, right? That's because we're trying to avoid dictating. We don't want to do that. The pool is essentially the same, but sometimes they will choose to even go beyond the pool. Then we have a conversation about that. Quite frankly, in the end if they are adamant about it and if we feel that there are adequate qualifications, that's fine.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Do you mean in terms of the advisory pool?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It is one of the remits of the advisers for doing capacity development. That being said, if there are no underlying capacity development dollars, as Mr. McLeod rightly said, then there's only so much they can do in terms of level of training and so on. The two come hand in hand.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We go through a national RFP process. That's public and it's embedded in that RFP in the statement of qualifications that we are seeking in terms of making them eligible to be part of that standing offer. We can table that with the committee so that you can see that as part of your study to assess whether those qualifications are adequate or not.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Again, that speaks to the level of intervention. Co-management means that the adviser is working in partnership with the community, whereas third party is, as we said, the most interventionist, whereby, effectively, an outsider or the adviser is running the community financially.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That is one of our challenges. I don't think that we do a very good job of assessment. We try to do so as part of the reviews of why a first nation under third party management as long as it is. If we feel that, in fact, the third party manager is at fault, we will get rid of that third party manager and bring in a new one.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In every case there is a management action plan. Each situation is different and depends on how they got to that situation in the first place. For some, as I said, it's just in getting quorum. There is a division within the community, and they just can't get together to have a proper governance board in order to manage themselves.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  This is where the department benefits from regional offices across the country, whose sole job is that day-to-day relationship. There is not a day that goes by without some degree of communication between that first nations community and our regional office, and they are working valiantly every day to figure out a management action plan and a go-to to get them out.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Obviously, a measure of success is that we don't have any degree of intervention at all. I take Ms. McLeod's point on the trends. We, in our job in the finance part of the department, together with my colleagues in the regional office, are looking at the state of the trend, our dashboard, of level of intervention continuously, and then we have a conversation about why certain things are happening.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Sorry for giving a partial answer. We determined that our deadline for finishing the report for the minister and the Assembly of the First Nations would be the end of this year. This new fiscal relationship, for which the default prevention and management policy is part of what I would call rubric of financial management policy....

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you very much for asking the question, because I didn't get a chance to finish my remarks. I started my opening remarks saying these challenges aren't new. We started with a policy in 2008. We did a review. We updated it in 2013. Four years later we are now reviewing it again because we do need to review to update it, based on what we're hearing from communities.