Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would say the first big one is supporting organizations at a realistic level to offer the services that they need to offer. Some of the federal government departments do really amazing work in some of these areas. We have friendship centres that have amazing relationships with Health Canada, and other areas where they are able to get a portion of the funds or project money to do this kind of work.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There is some work being done through some of the residential school money, through IRSSA, and through some of the other funds. One of the biggest successes I've seen besides the Indian residential school money and being able to support those people in the broader community, has been transportation.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  First would be a standardized process, or the ability to develop a standardized piece, for organizations. On reserve and off reserve are very different, but the process to get there is the same. You want to work with the people in the community and get them there. We need a tool, or the ability to create a tool, that people can use and understand how to use.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Every person I've worked with or have done an intervention with is very different. One person might be okay with experiencing some of those pieces. Then you have someone who has a hard time finding a job, suffers from addiction, can't find a place to live, doesn't have a whole lot of support, or you could have someone who has one catastrophic event or thing happen to them.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  For one friendship centre, for example, the core is $160,000. The total annual budget of that centre is about $2 million, and $450,000 is own-source revenue, social economy, social enterprise. Another portion would be private. A lot of friendship centres have support from private industry businesses.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  For us I try to use real-world examples. If you're an indigenous person in a city—and I'll speak from an actual example I experienced—and you take someone to, say, the emergency department of a mental health hospital, which I've done, the first question you get from a psychiatrist is, does your government pay for anything for you?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  For me to become a trainer took a week straight. You live where you're doing it for the week. There are different levels. For us, because it is a prevalent issue, we also have a homeless shelter in our friendship centre as part of our services. We try to make sure every employee is trained.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's on reserve and off reserve. The reason I became trained—I don't do it anymore because it's hard to do that every day, but we have other staff who are now taking over that piece. The reason we had our own staff trained, who are aboriginal, was so that when you work with aboriginal clients there's a better understanding of all the other things that happened.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As you know, a portion of the UAS sunsetted March 31 of this previous year. It was recommitted in the current budget, but it has not been released yet. It has not been released to the NAFC or friendship centres yet. As of this point, no friendship centre has received their core funding.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yancy can answer that one.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There are 118.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's $43 million.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  If we want to make a difference in how mental health is looked at and treated in Canada, especially in indigenous communities, I don't think there's really another option.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Maybe I'll give some personal background on myself. I'm originally from an isolated Inuit community in the north. I lived there for 17 years. It's a super-strong recreation community. Most of the communities in my area have very strong recreation and sports programs and very strong after-school programs.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We always ask friendship centres how much money they really need to do what they're doing. A lot of friendship centres are very good at leveraging money. On average, if they receive $120,000 to $170,000 in core-like funding or whatever, they're really spending on average over $300,000 to make sure that they're still able to hire the people they need and that they have the space, so well over double what is being received now.