Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I have a few points on this. I think the most important point for us is how we are moving to services that would be delivered by first nations, Inuit and Métis. If you look at, for example, the last few years and what we have been trying to do, we now have 85 first nations that

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The numbers I have at the moment, May 2019, on my side the total is 5,230 employees, which is an increase of 135 FTEs. It's not necessarily related to internal services. It could also be related to a lot of programs and new initiatives. As you know, we have received significant i

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  From the time of the creation of the department two years ago. It's not necessarily 2015.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  On the fiscal relationship, the work that my department was doing will continue over the next few years. It's not a change from one department to another department in this case. You're right that the transparency act would be on our side. The answer remains the same, which is t

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It was my understanding that the important objective at the time was to focus on the relationship, to separate the relationship side from the service side. It was important to make sure we really focused on re-establishing the relationship and the focus on the services would be a

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You said “again”; it sounds a bit negative. I'm teasing, sorry.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm sorry.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Sorry.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. I also want to thank you for the opportunity to address the committee today. I would like to recognize that we are on the traditional territory of the Algonquin people. I'd like to follow my colleague the deputy minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's part of the discussion. Some of the first nations, Inuit and Métis mentioned that the current envelope that is growing is also significantly, overwhelmingly for protection, so if you reduce protection, can you take that funding to do more prevention? Those are discussions, o

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We've been told by some first nations leaders that strong families and strong kids make a strong nation. It means that it comes from there; that's the heart of their identity—with language, of course, and a few other elements. In this case it's part of the decolonization proces

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We have never been able to have any consensus, including among ourselves, if we have tried to define what the system should look like. We have past experience of defining what the system looked like, and that's called the Indian Act. That was not the objective here. The objective

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  What you can say to those groups is just that the legislation doesn't impose on them the system that's here. We're not saying that the system in Saskatchewan should be managed by the FSIN or by another organization. We're saying that the rights holders have the right to come up w

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I would turn to Joanne on this. I don't want to paint an only dark portrait of this region. In Manitoba I've seen some agencies that have reduced significantly the number of kids in care by working with communities and trying to find solutions that are different from the existing

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We don't only work with AFN, MNC and ITK. We have trilateral tables at the regional level. We have discussions with the first nations, Métis and Inuit across the country. As I mentioned before, this legislation doesn't try to, and in answer to your question, I have to resist th