Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. Definitely. We largely have an elected band system in the communities. Every two years there's an election. A new council comes in, and so there are gaps in that way. There are not enough resources to gather the facts and data. Much is lost. We lost our band office a couple

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As Hansard shows, every time I ask my premier a question on indigenous issues, I'm told to talk to my federal cousins. That is unfair because we have over 130,000 people here. I know that Manitoba gets money for our indigenous people, but where that money goes we do not know. The

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  A Manitoba Conservation office is located in Island Lake on Stevenson Island. They are the ones that make the final decision. The leadership can recommend and ask, but ultimately they are the ones responsible.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We hope so.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. They go up. They use a plane. They survey the area. Then a decision is made. It's not directly us, the indigenous leadership, that can order a water bomber. It has to go through that channel.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I believe that it would be better for it to go to the indigenous community because I know for sure that they would open their doors readily and easily to indigenous people when they are evacuated. My goal is that people do not need to be evacuated because we do have the knowledge

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. There was a great person by the name of Ivan Mason. He had those plans readily available. He's not in our communities any more because his job got cut, but when he was there in our communities, we never had to face this issue of running here and there at the last minute tryi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Definitely. There has to be something in place. We need those plans worked out. I explained that we have practice sessions on what to do during evacuations. We need something like that for first nations. That was what my proposal was largely based on. It was sad to see after we

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. One of the things that my people are known for is their resilience. We're known for not sharing our issues. Privately, I had one prenatal mother who had a two-week old, just standing in the middle of the shelter, who was just outright crying. She was so worried about the iss

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. However, the funding was taken away. It was unfair. We're trying to get those plans back into place, but everything was cut off under the Harper government for a lot of our programs in the first nations. We're still seeing the fallout of that to this day. Thankfully, there w

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Evacuees were forced to wait in line for up to eight hours because of the slow registration process by CRC—the Canadian Red Cross—before they were even given a chance to eat food or relax. It was quite frustrating. I had asked the Red Cross site manager to allow our own people t

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for inviting me here to speak. I am the MLA for Kewatinook here in Manitoba. I have 16 communities in my riding. Two are towns, and then I have 14 first nations, 11 of which are remote fly-in communities, and of course Churchill is now a remote fly-in community. The wi