Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Its a very good question. Having lived and breathed in this community with this issue I recognize that point, but the changes are difficult. It's extremely difficult to get different organizations and government bureaucrats to change how they are held accountable. We have had the whole gauntlet.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Something that I want to be really clear about—and I haven't even begun to address this issue in the urban context—is that lot of the service agencies are muffled. They're not allowed to speak the truth of what's really going on, because if they spoke that, then they would lose their funding.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Immediately? I guess your lens is very important. As an urban indigenous advocate, I think we've been researched and programmed to death. We've been “clientized”, you could even say, and I think that we have to move beyond that. It took us how many decades to get here? How many decades is it going to take us to get out of here, together, in a good way?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's very important. I'm going to say it again because it's worth saying: I am very concerned about a program provider approach, a service provider approach. This is the problem. Governments dump money on a program. However, we're talking strategy. We have those 30 kids who had a suicide pact.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's extremely important. We've been meeting with the City of Vancouver. Housing is tremendously important. Safe, suitable, affordable housing for the diverse needs of vulnerable children and families is critical. You have to engage the cities. The federal government, through this report, can start advocating that the provincial governments start working with the city governments on a tripartite relationship to ensure those housing needs are built around schools and community centres.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We participated recently with CMHC and the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, about a month ago in Gatineau on this issue. You are right; it's a critical issue. Ultimately, the federal government.... We are the only G8 nation without a federal housing strategy. In the devolution process that I shared with you, the feds have always said that we are not their responsibility—the 80% of us who live off reservations are not their responsibility—so we've been living in this vacuum.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you. I just quit smoking and drinking coffee yesterday, so those are tough questions. It's very simple: research, research. We can look at the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples done in 1996. We can look at the reports that came out, but most importantly, we can look at the 94 TRC recommendations that just came out.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We would be pleased to gather that information. In fact, we're in the process right now of making a request through the civic, provincial, and federal governments to jointly fund this as a model here in Vancouver. We'd be happy to provide all that information for this committee to address those issues.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Without getting caught between on-reserve and off-reserve and who is and who isn't providing, let's be real, all right? If this study you're working on is going to be real, if you want to make it meaningful, then you have to realize you can't just pick and choose an item and address that item.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Oh, very simple. There are a number of challenges, of course—very different from the on-reserve versus off-reserve—and the federal government, regardless of what political party has been in power, has never been the friend of the off-reserve indigenous population. I think we have to start there.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We do not take government programs, and we do not deliver government programs through our organization. We organize events where we generate revenue to pay our salaries. It's very different from program service delivery.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Good morning, my name is Scott. I am Coast Salish from Vancouver Island. I am currently the executive director of an urban aboriginal organization known as Aboriginal Life in Vancouver Enhancement Society, ALIVE. We've been around for approximately seven years and we are a resident-based organization.