Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  You can give them our address and our phone number. I'm sure they know my RDG. They have to express those concerns. It's their right to express those concerns. Just engage in the process. We'll see what's going to come out.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's not the objective; that's for sure. We have sometimes heard people say we're going with the short-term solution, because they would like to have a new system. We assess all the systems to make sure we have a sustainable approach. We're not eliminating the long-term advisori

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That has been the challenge for decades in the system. As you said, it's not different from provinces. It's not different from federal infrastructure sometimes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  On water, as I mentioned, we got a significant amount of funding over the last few years that is more about O and M than just strictly capital.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Most of the funding in urban areas is through the friendship centres. We work with friendship centres. On the housing strategy, there are also possibilities in the future, working with provinces and their social housing allocations and making sure it benefits first nations, Inuit

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I fully understand your frustration. Send me the projects. It is something we should talk about in the context of a 10-year infrastructure plan. First nations are raising it: The population is aging, and having the population age outside the community is not necessarily in the

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's not the FSIN or those communities; it's both. We're multiplying the effort. We'll see what's going to come out of this process with FSIN. They had significant support from communities in terms of going ahead with a regional approach. The activities remain at the local level

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We have nurses stationed in all communities. Some are our employees, and some are employees of first nations. We provide primary health care services in communities that are too far from the provincial system; otherwise, we provide public health. Our challenge in this is recrui

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's the same with teachers and less so, maybe, with skilled trades. Of course, for health professionals it is a challenge, and you need to make sure that nurses and teachers have a house or place to live and find it to be a value proposition that they want. A lot of them do that

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's a very good point that it's only $2.5 million. We have this $2.5 million because the FSIN, the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations in Saskatchewan, asked for the development of a regional strategy and its implementation. The amount of $2.5 million doesn't fund, nece

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I know, and if I include an “s”, it doesn't make sense because it's already “people”. I know that, and I don't use the “s” in French, even if I'm told I should. Thanks.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, for example, on the housing initiatives I mentioned before, the money goes directly to the regions; it doesn't go to ITK. ITK doesn't deliver services for Inuit people—

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We engage with them, but we don't necessarily go through ITK to manage those services.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We work with Makivik, NTI, the Inuvialuit...and we also work with others.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Overcrowded housing is probably the most important one. Yes, housing issues are probably the most significant one. We see it in many communities, but what you see sometimes in some communities is that there's almost a crisis. In most cases you also see it with the Inuit populatio