Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, members of Parliament, I want to bring you greetings from my chief, Terrance Paul, of the Membertou First Nation. As was explained earlier, my name is Darren GooGoo, and I'm the director of education for my community. I've been asked today to c

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yet we still don't have engineers, doctors, or dentists. We have some nurses, and we also have an overabundance—I don't like to say this—of teachers. I don't think that's a bad thing because I am a former high school math and science teacher. So we have an overabundance of teache

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I have no watch, man. I don't wear a watch, sorry!

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. The points I want to make are: first, we need to commit to funding first nations post-secondary activities in this country; second, we need to increase the grade 12 graduates; third, we need to allow partnerships to exist between aboriginal Canada and institutions of higher

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In answer to your first question about how we are an anomaly, we're able to invest. We have other source revenues in our community. Some of them come from gaming. Some of them come from corporate activities. We have a geomatics company, which employs four people, that has generat

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We are seeing more success. Last year we graduated fourteen out of sixteen high school students. This year we have seventeen potential graduates, and we expect to graduate all seventeen, but I think we'll be happy with fifteen of them graduating. We have high expectations for ou

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  May I just quickly address that, because that's important?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's important for citizens within communities to have confidence in the people they elect to do the job they elect them to do. Growing up, in my life, I didn't believe I'd ever work for our community. I come from one of the smallest families in my community, and for a long time

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  How does this work? Is it supposed to work?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  When I speak French, everybody laughs.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In four minutes? Okay. Going back to the first question you asked me, one of our current issues is that we need to identify areas in which we want specializations to occur. To that end, one of the components of the MOU we're signing with Cape Breton University is the development

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  There is a lack of political will in Canada to address some of the major issues affecting first nations. The only way we're going to be able to turn that around is by having first nations be more vocal, by having first nations get into positions of power. I'm an optimist and I th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I do that.