Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you for the introduction. Thank you to everyone here, and I acknowledge the land that we're on. I'm just going to head right into it. I want to thank the members of the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs for the time to speak to you on the talent and ret

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think there has to be a proper assessment of and respect for the political and technical auspices that already exist in our regions. I think a big mistake currently being made by different people is that they're relying too heavily on the Assembly of First Nations. It is not

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, certainly. Manitoba has actually been the bastion of leadership on the education front, but unfortunately we've been a victim of the intentional underfunding for decades. Our community arguably was one of the first to actually take the initiative for our education authority,

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's going to take a long time for a true catch-up. Unfortunately in Manitoba we're a long way off. The problem is that when you make these grand pronouncements, you're not ensuring that things move forward. You have institutions that deliberately derailed first nations communiti

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, I want to say that when people look into the issue that they look at the heart of the matter. Unfortunately, we're always blamed for our misery, when nothing could be further from the truth. Oh, it's about accountability. Every cent that comes to our communities is audited f

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You'll enhance my capacity. Again, by making a meaningful effort to build relationships. On the one hand, we have a quite a long history of working with our federal partners. We do audits. We do all the things we need to do to move forward. Then other envelopes of funding are ea

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Let's do multi-year programs. Let's make a plan. We have to be fiscally responsible and accountable. We know how things are going to go. Take right now for that matter. We already know our best practices in our region. We've shown how to do things responsibly. Let's make a multi-

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Right. It must be noted that a lot of these services were chronically, if not deliberately, underfunded. You need to address that. If you want to talk about doing things properly, then you need to have a discussion on the fact that things have been chronically underfunded for lit

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. For instance, I can tell you that there have been eight personal care homes—we had to call them personal care homes—operating on reserve for the past 40 years looking after our elders. I bet you if you looked at the census, you'd find that the Province of Manitoba ha

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Excellent. Thank you very much. I am Grand Chief Arlen Dumas from the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. Thanks for the opportunity to speak on this very important issue. As our moderator said, Manitoba is ground zero for child welfare apprehensions. That validates statements made by

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I apologize. I wasn't aware of your protocol here. I actually skipped over allowing my co-witness to speak, because I assumed that she would be given her own time, her own opportunity.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I appreciate that.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  If I may, Dan, I'm a little surprised at your question as I had called you into my office specifically with former chief Jim Bear to discuss this issue almost two years ago. I'm surprised you haven't read the bringing our children home act, as you're from our province. If you f

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It won't happen. You also need to have a full appreciation of the history of precedent that has been set. The whole history of all the litigation that has happened and all of those other pieces will be incorporated into the ongoing operations of our system.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Well, with all due respect, Dan, I've heard constitutional experts tell me for 30 years that my section 35 rights were an empty box. Magically, within the last three years, I've been told that my constitutional section 35 rights are full. At the end of the day, we know the histor