Finance committee  Maybe I'll just start quickly and then I'll hand it over to Chris if he wants to add anything. I would just note that we've done some information collection from our centres and have hired more staff than we laid off. We've maintained our level of employment and have hired more people over the pandemic.

Finance committee  Thank you. I think you just spoke right to my heart on that one. Both President Sheppard and I are alumni of our own national youth council for friendship centres, so we were mentored and developed through the friendship centre movement, and up until about 2016, we actually had a national youth program, which was the cultural connection for aboriginal youth.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Early on, because the National Association of Friendship Centres has an existing agreement with Indigenous Services through the urban programming for indigenous peoples, as well as the urban indigenous coalition tables, it was our position that there was already an existing mechanism to at least release dollars immediately.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think the FES, as it was called earlier, talked about the $926.7 million. I think about $90 million of that went specifically to urban. What becomes a challenge is that we don't want to be looking at on-reserve in-the-north communities as a comparator group for urban indigenous people.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Quickly on the vaccine rollout, we've been in conversation with Indigenous Services' first nations and Inuit health branch as well as the Public Health Agency of Canada, just to get in early with some of those conversations. Now it's the same issue in that the rollout of the vaccine will happen provincially.

Public Safety committee  Certainly. That's actually something we had to cut out of our opening statement: examples of the types of programs that friendship centres operate within the justice sphere. They include a lot of liaising between police services and community members, and obviously a lot of prevention work and ongoing support.

Public Safety committee  Yes, we definitely can. I want to address your complaints mechanisms. I think they're very largely inaccessible, especially within the urban spaces. The people who are experiencing, say, police violence or state-enforced violence are very vulnerable people, and many times they have been very dehumanized.

Public Safety committee  I will do my best to be concise. With the systemic and institutional racism in policing, there are two things that I think we really need to reinstate, or instate in general. Those are integrity and the trust from the indigenous community members.That's a responsibility of the police agencies.

Public Safety committee  That's the biggest thing for a first nations policing act. It's not going to really fall to a majority of the indigenous population. I am from Nishnawbe Aski Nation. We've had the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service for a number of years, and I think it's a fantastic model. It's not without its challenges, for sure, especially in the beginning, but it's certainly been a big change-maker in our communities to have a police service that's owned and operated by our own.

Public Safety committee  Mr. Chair, would I be able to respond to that question, if there is time?

Public Safety committee  Thank you. I will try to be within that 45 seconds. In the report we mentioned, we looked at a number of reports that made specific recommendations on policing. For the last 50 years, recommendations around training have been made. The issue hasn't been the training; the issue has been the implementation and the accountability.

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much. The comments will be made by President Sheppard, and I'll be here for the Q and A.

Finance committee  If it's okay with Chris, I could give the overview. Our president is much closer to the ground and could provide that on-the-ground reality. I wanted to chime in on the charitable sector in supporting what Peter Dinsdale from the YMCA has said. Friendship centres are also within that charitable non-profit sector.

Finance committee  Our proposal alone was for $15 million—or just under that, about $14.9 million—for urgent, immediate costs covering staffing, capacity, personal protective equipment, the infrastructure costs of renting equipment such as handwashing stations and porta-potties, fuel and vehicles, because they're delivering food and supplies to people, as well as modifications to the centres, both sanitization supplies and cleaning services, as well as food for the food banks' kitchens and delivery.

Finance committee  I can jump in and add a bit on the data. A lot of the indigenous data that's being collected is very rightfully being collected by indigenous entities, such as The First Nations Information Governance Centre, various Métis nations and Inuit-formed entities. What we're saying is that we don't currently have a similar entity that collects the data within an urban landscape.